(14 Nov 2022, 11:09 pm)mb134 wrote As I said in my initial post, I think the timing of the rises is ridiculous. 

That said, the tables you produced seem to suggest most of the increases are around 9-10% so they're pretty much bang on what would be expected with the current rate of inflation. A decent chunk of the people I know (across multiple industries and levels of seniority) have wages increasing pretty much in line with that, so it's possible that only a handful will actually be massively out of pocket. Obviously you'd also expect unions to be fighting for around the same percentage for bus drivers, which is almost guaranteed to be one of the driving factors behind this raise. 

You then have the constant rise of both diesel costs and gas/electricity costs. Couple that to increasing costs in maintenance, both with staffing cost and parts, and office based costs. 

I'd hope you agree that staff for these companies should be paid properly, so I don't personally see a huge amount of options other than raising fares to help pay for that.

Absolutely agree that staff working for Arriva, or any company for that matter, should be paid properly. 

On the point about wage increases though. You may know people who have had wage increases in line with inflation, but factually most people haven't had such increases. The ONS have published data on this today. The majority of the public sector have been offered below inflation awards; NHS doctors/nurses, Teachers and the Fire Service were offered around 5%, Civil Service have been offered 2%-3%. Also, despite being the region with the highest number of unionised workers in the UK, that still only stands at 28%. Many, including retail workers, will be lucky if they get anything other than the increases forced by an increase in minimum wage. 

Of course, this isn't a race to the bottom, and it shouldn't be prohibitive to a policy of fair pay, but a business has to offer a product at a price that people see as reasonable and are willing to pay. When we're in the middle of the biggest cost of living crisis in most of our lifetimes, people simply don't have that disposable income to continue paying increased costs. 

I'd always expect a business to consider increasing it's pricing to factor in increased operating expense, it also needs to remain competitive to be viable. Cutting services and increasing fares is the easy option, whereas focusing on growing the business may be more difficult, but could achieve the same result with some long-term thinking.

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but the key for me is that once upon a time, people who used buses and trains to commute had no other option. They were at the mercy of whatever operators wanted to charge. Many do have another option now though; they can work from home and therefore eliminate the transport cost completely. We're seeing that on the railways, with Govt Ministers regularly stating that they've lost their peak time travellers, resulting in a drop of fare revenue. Even with those who don't have that option, then increasing fares continue to push people towards private car use. Buses will never compare to cars on convenience, frequency or reliability, so you're left to trying to attract based on fares only.