What is alarming to me is the amount of BSIP money being used to pay for every day supported services - that is going to be a huge problem.

The elephant in the room is there is no easy way of reducing the cost of running a bus service.

There might be marginal savings by franchising and removing duplication where it's not needed. But i'd argue that is already happening with fully secured services only really running where there is no reasonable commercial alternative. And despite what other say elsewhere, operators already cross subsidise - there is no way most of the Stagecoach commercial network would run past 19:00 if they weren't really really busy during the day.

As Leon Daniels, former head of surface transport at TfL recently said, it's Horsebus economics. Somebody has still got to feed the horse and pay the driver - and that costs.

I hope the Mayor has a functioning abacus!