Surely it would have made sense for one of these companies to bid as it would be silly for them to charge the council one price but NAT another price for the same service.
There was an indication that the money for the service partly came from the money the WAG had spare from the T9 not running. I don't know how accurate that is however, if it's the case, then NAT were already the 'bidder'.
Costs a bus yes but if it has a lot of through passengers, it might be worth it and that is the risk with it. You are kind of relying on Newport to Bristol passengers to make the extra bus worth it as I get the impression that there wasn't much Chepstow to Newport traffic or Stagecoach would have kept that bit on as it would have been easy to run.
I suspect the Newport-Bristol market was next to nothing. Pass holders would use it, everybody else took the train. Chepstow-Newport might have produced enough to pay for the bus and the additional bus meant a bit more flexiability to regain traffic delays.
The first part of this sentence is just starting the spiral of decline. As soon as you cut frequency, less people use the bus.
Cutting Cribbs at peak times, could work. Is there much usage there at peaks?
Cutting Bristol City Centre I think you might as well drop the route as isn't that the whole basis of this route running.
The decline has already happened. The peak traffic went when the government started subsiding car journeys across the bridge and, off peak, it's a few pass holders to Cribbs. The money saved by cutting the frequency would also cover having a Saturday service again (a big loss if you believe the moaners in the local papers) and a frequency that could cope with the traffic issues and give some reliability might attract a few people back.
Once Christmas shopping starts kicking in NAT are going to realise why Whiteladies Road (the logical way in from Cribbs) was abandoned in favor of the longer route via the M32!
) it was always very busy - surprised they didn't go for that corridor.
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