(22 Feb 2023, 12:19 am)Jimmi wrote Various restructuring is taking place across the Transdev network this year.

Things such as the upcoming end of the bus recovery grant plus rising costs has made some services no longer viable.

Including the above, some tendered services are going the distance as they no longer wish to operate them for whatever reason, believe the tendered price of some of their contracts no longer cover the operational costs so many are going out for retender, these are the latest casualties to surface online at least but it's already started occurring, services in the Otley and Ilkley areas under the 'Wharfedale Links' and 'Otley Dash' brands were offloaded last weekend with some of the daytime services now being covered by Connexionsbuses, others are currently suspended as no operator has yet been found to run the services and part of the Otley Dash (now 965 again) route is now covered by an extended Flyer A3 service on evenings and Sundays. More contracts are expected to be offloaded and/or put out for retender from what I've heard.

Commercial services are impacted too, two I noticed yesterday was Team Pennine services 262 and 319 which are registered for withdrawal, although these examples are at least duplicating routes run by other companies.

One of the high profile routes at risk of being lost is the Coastliner 840 between Malton, Thornton-le-Dale & extending to Whitby generally every 2 hours which has seen multiple petitions put out in order to save it although North Yorkshire County Council supposedly need to find ways in supporting around 80 services across the county, one other example being the 24 between Harrogate and Pateley Bridge which has been given funding to support the service (for either the next year or two, can't remember the time frame), other examples include the 70 run by Reliance and the 18 run by Coatham Coaches which were both commercial until recently and currently running on short term contracts whilst they judge if they're worth continuing to fund.

Think we'll be seeing cuts like this across the country with various companies in the next year or so, already seeing many services being registered for cancellation or revised in some form.

What's that Jimmi? Copy and paste liveries along with funky interiors hasn't driven growth and made these routes viable? 

Well knock me down and tickle my toes with a little feather. There's a shock! 

Time to stop the gravy train and jobs for the boys me thinks!