It's nearly that bad, but you have missed out HcL, which has a number of registered services, some on permits, and Prentice Westwood. Strictly speaking, Festival Travel are also based (HQ) in Lothian, but their registered services all operate from the Fife depot.
There's also the community bus operators HcL and Lothian Community Transport.
I don't think anyone else has commented but I see there was a service change on 8th Jan with the 111 going via Fort Kinnaird in the middle* of the day. Presumably passenger numbers were healthy enough to bring in a change of route.
Allans of Gorebridge had two ex London Metrobuses, OJD817Y and 871Y, formerly M817 and M871. Acquired in early 2001, the rist kept for two years, the second for 16 months.
Can't have been one of these. I believe the ones I remember were running around in the old Travel West Midlands livery, certainly a livery that looked very similar to it if not. Cheers for the response anyway
I believe it’s as follows:
A new addition, of sorts. See the Ember page for the new twice daily service from Wallyford Park and Ride to Kinross and Dundee in a couple of weeks time.
That might be a new candidate for the most pointless route I have ever seen. Who on earth needs to make such a journey? I could understand an E1X between Dundee and Edinburgh, but Wallyford? Wow that’s crazy.
It’s a good route for people from East Lothian heading to Dundee and Kinross. There is a park and ride for people to drop their car off.
Dead mileage killer to utilise the new charger at Wallyford park & ride I believe
The only vaguely useful run is the 1651 from Edinburgh to Wallyford on the weekend - other than that can't see any reason to use that part of the E1X for anything other than very niche enthusiast loops.
www.railforums.co.uk
Thanks
Not necessarily a good thing as it removes yet another bus operator able to tender for local bus and schools work leading to additional costs for the local authority.
I also think if Lothian were to make another purchase, the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) would be on to them. It would leave East Lothian as good as competitionless.
Prentice Coaches are one of the best operators around and given their close family ties, I can’t see them giving the business up for a long time, if ever.
Now the CMA would definitely block that one!
A sale of Borders Buses to Lothian is never going to happen. Not just because the CMA would kibosh it, either; much of the Borders bus network is supported with only four services - X62, X95, 235 and 253 - run commercially.
Oh absolutely. Borders Buses themselves have little competition as well, although in this case this is simply due to the other companies walking away. It’s terribly unprofitable and I’d be frightened to know some of the subsidies needed. They’re bound to be getting millions every year to run the network.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way. I might be wrong on this (& by all means, feel free to correct me on this), but Prentice & Lothian seem to have a relatively good relationship with one another as far as competition goes. You had the partnership between them with the 69 for 18 months in 2018/19/20, & both companies have made changes to their routes, diverting passengers onto their services. If anything, I’d actually like to see it be a bit more balanced (maybe more services for Prentice?).