I'm not sure if it's still the same, but Scotland used to have a different way of reimbursement for lost revenue where free (OAP and such) passes are used.
It has never been the full amount but it is certainly a proportion.
Sensibly, Scotland has a national concessionary fare scheme administered by Transport Scotland. Operators are currently paid at 52.9% of the single adult fare foregone which is substantially less than when the scheme was introduced 20 years ago. There are different rates for the under 22 free travel scheme.
While I agree with you on that, that is why most operators offer day tickets as those aren't taken into account for the reimbursement formula in Scotland. Houstons don't currently offer that for some bizarre reason so not only are the fares high, but there is no multi journey savings to be had, unless you opt for the £30 weekly (which is reasonable given the network I think, but then why not offer a £10 day ticket?)
Possibly because virtually the whole network in their operating area is tendered, it maybe that their contract with Dumfries and Galloway Council/SWESTRANS does not allow them to, or they simply don't wish to lose the revenue foregone from the higher single and return journey fares?
McCalls offer a day of ticket and so I don't think that it's a D&G/SWESTRANS issue.
Have you a link for that, please? Meaning to have a trip that way
A weekly for everywhere bar Edinburgh (though they didn't say how far on the 101 the ticket is valid to) is £30.
Which is exactly why Houston's will either not be able to, or wish to, offer a £10 day ticket!
They don't publicise it, I only found out because I emailed them.
Operators can (and do) have zonal day tickets or exceptions to network wide day tickets. And nothing at all stops them doing that for Edinburgh and only have the day ticket valid on the core network and not include the section that is 60 miles away from the rest of the network.
That's not much use - I mean, I've used some rather obscure tickets but never one that seemingly isn't publicised in any way to the general public
In June 2019 I stayed in a Dumfries hotel and had a great 7 days exploring the area by bus. I tried to find information about the Discovery Ticket back then but there was nothing on the bus operators websites. I ended up restricting my travel to Stagecoach but had a fantastic week using a Stagecoach South West Scotland 7 Day Megarider. It‘s a lovely unspoilt area and something that I would like to do again. However, with the current situation of no day tickets or multi operator weekly ticket and the very high single fares, I would use my car instead.
The figures don't seem to add up. 200 students are at risk of not having transport to school, but as I understand it, the council are only paying for a dupe bus. Given McCalls only run single deckers, I can't see how removing 1 single decker size bus would mean 200 students can't get to school?
Depends what the fares are? in my local area, coach companies charge pupils £1200-1400 per annum (roughly £7 per day) to be paid for up front, for a school service with a full load (60 pax). More if the numbers are lower.
These pupils will be being carried free of charge using their under 22 cards. Therefore most will be recording half the adult fare less the generation factor when it comes to the claim from Transport Scotland. The operator has been charging the Council £230 per day I believe to provide the duplicate.
No it is not. The Operator can choose to provide a particular amount of capacity, and if everybody is not conveyed then hard luck.
If the reimbursement is not covering the costs of operation then the operator has to either subsidise it out of their own money, get the local Transport Authority (D&G in this case) to subsidise it, or not operate it. 'Strong demand' of concessionary fare passengers in itself does not necessarily pay the bills.
As this dupe is going to be run at the time of day when all their buses are going to be in use (i.e. at the time of peak demand), it will require another bus in the fleet and another driver. Someone has got to pay the bills.
Not necessarily. My employers had to drop a route that involved 3 buses running full (almost 200 students were carried every day at its height) down a corridor to local schools because it wasn't commercially viable, we didn't have the levers to make it do so and the costs it was importing to the rest of the network by having to run larger (and so more fuel hungry) vehicles all day on other routes for the rest of the day was making the whole network loss making - another operator who did have those levers was able to take them on but a single full bus journey, particularly on child rate fares, doesn't make running a bus commercial on its own. If you have enough off-peak service work then a full school bus is a nice piece of extra revenue to support those services. Coach operators will often be able to pick up private hires and the like and so having some school work to help pay for the resource to be available when something more lucrative comes up may be a help. You may also be able to make it viable if you have part time drivers, and relatively cheap older vehicles, who are happy to only have a few hours work a day keeping the knock on costs down to a minimum. As a bus operator we didn't have suitable vehicles or staff to try and enter the private hire market, our pay agreement didn't allow for the sort of very part time duties these schools would require and the demand for school travel into the main town in the area (due to how education worked in this highly rural, county border area) was an order of magnitude higher than the local bus network could require off-peak.
More to the point - a council contract will have been won at a rate that the operator is happy to run at (and hopefully that happiness translates into a profit for them), rather than a commercial bus service relying entirely on concessionary fare reimbursement (on a take it or leave it basis) subject to the vagaries of how many children actually travelled. Few operators would be interested in such an arrangement, frankly, unless perhaps it fits in with other lucrative runs.
It's worth noting that in JMBs case (as I know you mentioned it above), because the buses are primarily school buses and unlikely to be used by members of the public, JMB can play the concessionary system similar to what the coach operators are doing. Setting a high adult fare to get high reimbursement back.
The rate feels slightly higher than average for this kind of work but I am basing off other areas which seem to average 30-40k for a school bus tender. Is this dupe not an emergency tender though? If so that would normally attract a higher price too and so perhaps should be considered.
It is rather surprising that Thornhill has been reduced to only one journey in one direction. From what I recall many years ago, passengers travelling north from Thornhill were very much in single digits. The main passenger flow was between Dumfries and Thornhill. The whole route south of Biggar is somewhat tenuous but suspect there is more demand on the Moffat journeys. It would probably be best if the 102 was discontinued completely.
