(13 Nov 2020, 7:41 pm)Drifter60 wrote I suppose it depends on which view you take. On the one hand as you say, much needed extra ‘revenue’ when there’s few passengers. 
On the other hand some would say it’s a commercial business, which turns a profit, ‘milking’ money from the tax payer. 

I understand why any business would want to make use of such schemes, I don’t have an issue with that, in fact I encourage it, these schemes exist for people to use them. However incorrectly branded vehicles being used just to qualify for funding might be a seen as ‘milking’ tax payers.

The counter argument is that without the extra BSOG payments, an operator may decide that these journeys are not commercially viable (regardless of Andreos1’s previous comments about the daytime operation making enough profit to cover the evening operation - that is their decision to make). It’s an incentive which the government has created to encourage operators to buy and run more buses of this type, so this is what they are doing.

This enhanced payment could make or break the service, and, on work which is already operated under contract to the local authority, offer better value for money to the tenderer, where operators may be able to reduce their tender price taking into consideration the enhanced BSOG payments they will get instead.

It is surely better that an operator runs a service commercially, with an enhanced BSOG payment, than it being operated under contract to the local authority, where the full costs of operating the service are covered in the tender price?

Clearly all of this is not as important in the current climate... and changes are being made to schedules in far less time than normal, so the usual considerations may not be as easy to work with.


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