Arriva Buses Wales - Wrexham Depot

[iMarkeh]

RE: Arriva Buses Wales - Wrexham Depot

(12/03/2019 16:20)LJ51 DDA Wrote:  How can you expect a route carrying no paying passengers and only bus pass users on average 4 per day to keep itself stable, if there's no profit or stable income it goes, i can drive now but still regular use my bus route because i want to keep it, use it or lose it.

Everything would still be at a loss even under government control, well routes that are not making money anyway you cant expect bus routes to survive on the bus pass when companies barely get anything out of it, if the council pull their fingers out their rear and worked with Arriva that'd help the area a lot.

then again whether it is subsidised it'd probably be cut because the amount of cuts taking place across the country at the moment is just as bad as withdrawn commercial service's

everyone moans that Arriva want profits and that's it, well yeah, that's business and every other business functions like that.

Totally agree Depotsw cant put any blame onto Arriva at all, they tried to save the service's and provide a good one which they have, they've saved Wrexham from its public transport disasters over and over.

Some bus routes can (and do) make money on a full bus of passes. That said, almost all trips need to be full. It all depends on the business and their costs.

Councils and governments do need to pay up a bit more money for passes AND the law needs changing to allow councils to charge a small fee for the issue of the passes as well as charging a very minimal fee for concessionary pass users (so users pay 20p per trip for example and the council still pay the 70 off pence which they currently pay). It all helps to keep the services running.

I think that Arriva do want too much profit from their routes sometimes and will stretch the truth of what is and isn't viable. Their overheads are higher though which is sometimes overlooked and I think that on some occasions, routes do make money but they make money from weekly pass use or return use which I am lead to believe Arriva doesn't take into account for trip viability (hence why evening trips are generally not ran unless funded). Each trip has to take cash and if it doesn't it gets dropped. That side of things is wrong but if very few people are using it, I 100% agree it shouldn't be running.

Arriva are by no means angels but they do seem to take on work and give it a try in Wrexham but I think their overheads and policies re trip viability make it hard for them to get these viable routes. The routes which GHA ran are very much 'independant' routes who do much better not with a large company.