(14 Dec 2024, 12:32 pm)DeltaMan wrote The fare cap is a subsidy for the passengers not the operator
Encouraging people through the door, even when mutually beneficial to passenger and operator, is still a subsidy for the operator. It's not much different to the Eat Out to Help Out concept.
What I expect they've not accounted for is that the quality of ticketing data will have declined significantly, perhaps to the worst it will have ever been, since these fare subsidies came in. Seems the average mentality for drivers issuing single fares is that it's simple as '£2 adult, £1 child'. I've genuinely observed mentors teaching this. Vast majority of drivers are insufficiently motivated to issue tickets to the correct farestage to the extent that I'd argue farestages by and large have lost any intrinsic meaning. With such appalling data quality, if subsidy was removed without warning, they'd somehow be even more clueless as to passenger demand and travel needs.
When the free travel for under-22s was introduced in Scotland, drivers were instructed to still issue tickets to exact farestages - even for free tickets - and many drivers enforced this to the nth degree, so I don't accept any arguments this is a non-issue. I'd argue that it's even more important to maintain strength of data quality when the network is still ran at commercial risk, even when receiving support from subsidy, and this is certainly the position held by Scottish operators. What's funny is that some of those Scottish networks are actually quite strong, and Go North East's is on life support.
I dare say this will have influenced some, if not most, of these recent changes. But in this business today, it's evident that most decisions are based around working with poor resource rather than with much, if any, thought put toward any meaningful growth. Network decisions seem to be operationally-based, with minimal commercial acumen, and are overly concerned with reducing costs and creating pointless links while cutting or reducing meaningful, established links. But I can't imagine such thoughts will occur, when they're clearly too busy just fighting for their lives. Oh, and pissing around with the Santa Bus and various other gimmicks.