(17 May 2022, 7:00 am)Storx wrote They've been cancelling services for the best part of 6 months because of lack of drivers. If I could drive and that affected me twice I'd never use a bus again even if it was free.
That could've potentially made someone late for work or having a 2 hour work after work which is unacceptable as a passenger.
A website, pink bus, app, free cookies, free anything won't beat that problem.
As I said earlier I still don't get how they can possibly judge how things are doing on routes especially like the 82 which had at times 3 hour gaps.
I do think this is a really valid point that is worthy of some form of scrutiny - whether that be via the media or elected members or whatever. It does seem that services haven't been given a chance with fairly recent 'fit for the future' changes then huge numbers of journey cancellations pretty consistently ever since - how can they possibly know if low usage is because too few people want to travel, or more that they have been unable to due to abysmal reliability.
The whole subsidy debate is a tricky one as it probably serves noone to ban an operator from bidding, but equally it is galling to say the least to hear Martijn openly gloating that they know the LAs have cash set aside which will plug some of the gaps, which they hope to win. Hopefully for GNE none of the funders or media will spot that video, hardly paints them in a socially responsible light. On balance I think the fairest model would be, where an operator has walked away from the commercial service, then the LA stumps up the cash to run the service, the LA should retain any fares. If the service turns out to be profitable, the LA recoups some of it's outlay.