(01 Sep 2022, 7:58 pm)Adrian wrote The Quayside market blocks the same public highway and cycle route off every Sunday.

I don't think 1 bus would have achieved what they wanted from the launch event. See the discussions a couple years ago re: 'one bus in a field' and the Festival of Transport.

I can't imagine they'd have been allowed to run the event anyway if it was blocking the entire route, from the photos I've seen it was passable even on bikes.

Festival of Transport was a (rubbish) charged-for event where the sole purpose was to showcase a range of transport from years gone by so one bus in a field was something of a letdown.  I'm not sure it's that helpful to try to conflate that scenario with this event which was entirely different in purpose and scope.  This was an event presumably aiming to promote to the passing public (not spotters) the introduction of new vehicles to a bus service.  It wasn't charged for and I doubt they expected joe public to travel to the quayside specifically to see the buses.  For that purpose, I dont think many people that they would have been targeting are going to have thought "nope, not getting the message here, there's only one bus". Of course FOT was also about private owners/groups not as in this case an operator choosing to deploy resource on this. set against the backdrop of months of abysmal operations. The two scenarios are just nothing alike.