Without going over old ground this does make me think, should the 37 and 38 be more regular and should they maybe have higher capacity buses?
Just remember that the 38s were deckers before D&G took over. Given their lack of taste for deckers though, they would need to look at increasing the frequency. Which is a dead cert not going to happen unless the council pay up for it (because... why do something off your own back when you can beg the council to cough up for it and most of the time they do, and even better you can keep the revenue longer term too).
The 37 is now more frequent than it has been for a while, which may help slightly longer term if young people start to see value in holding back 30 minutes for the next bus (longer chat with mates, go to the shop etc, in return they get a quieter bus)
The 37/38 between Sandbach & Crewe & Crewe & Sandbach will always be full or busy around the school times as there is children who go to Sandbach schools.
if buses are getting full, then bigger buses or higher frequencies are needed around those times. A full bus not only risks people being left behind on lower frequency routes (like the 38), but it's also unpleasant for passengers.
For non students it makes people want to travel less by bus and pushes the 'bus is bad' rhetoric. And for young people, if your experience on a bus is being crammed in to a single decker bus or being left behind due to it being full, it doesn't exactly make you want to use the bus at weekends, school holidays or even generally when they leave school.
In short, full crush loaded buses are a bad advert for local bus services, and as much as some operator staff and management froth at the mouth just at the thought of full, standing and crush loaded buses (I've seen this a few times on social media groups from various levels of office based staff at a large operator), the reality is that it does more harm than good long term.
Plus, maybe if D&G provided more capacity on the 37 and 38, then other bus operators wouldn't have so much of a market for dedicated commercial school services. I always find it quite comical how Mikro manages so many commercial school buses duplicating over D&Gs network, existing purely because D&G point blank refuse to provide sufficient capacity or work with schools unless, as per, someone throws them a few £k from the tax pot.
the-bus-shop.co.uk
www.crosville.org
