Recent content by MotCO

I thought they were going to buy doughnuts, not jammy dodgers :D 1787655568 The RBF is presumably the Railway Benevolent Fund, so would be quite an appropriate charity.

Not sure if it fits here, but RouteOne reports that West Midlands Combined Authority has bought the Nat Exp bus opersations from Mobico. https://www.route-one.net/news/purchase-of-natex-bus-operations-will-smooth-franchising-says-tfwm/

Would the increasing move to EVs remove the fuel price volubility? I assume electricity prices do not change so frequently.

I've not seen contracts like that. Those in London were typically 5 +2 year contracts, so presumably there is no penalty for terminating at 5 years. And what happens if the contracted is terminated after 3 years because the contractor has gone bust - there would be no money to pay such...

But surely this can only be in the margins, or else an unsuccessful bidder could cry 'foul'.

Although it is possible, does it happen in practice? A lot of tenders in London have been handed back, presumably because of cost increases not reflected in the contract price.

180km?

I'm not sure if you would count The Delaine (Lincolnshire) as an SME, but imagine if their services were included in a franchise and they failed to win any Lots?

Is it a positioning journey?

I'm not in the industry, but at a guess.... For big groups, each route has to pay a small contribution to the group's CEO salary (which is probably 10 times the salary of the small owner,) plus there is the cost of HR departments (rhe small owner may do his own HR), H&S etc etc likewise. Also...

And some employees prefer working for a small company where the managing director knows everyone And some passengers enjoy seeing the same familiar drivers - it has been known for drivers to be concerned where a regular passenger has not turned up and alerted the relevant authorities. A small...

Thanks I stand corrected.

I wonder if Nat Ex had not been sold to Mobico whether the outcome would have been different? If the coach division was suffering, would they have tried to innovate to regain their market, or just write it off without trying, leaving essentially only the West Midlands buses in the company...

Sometimes you need to operate loss leaders on order to grow the market. How did Flixbus get a foothold if it didn't initially run at a loss?

And don't forget teachers can only take their vacations during the school summer holidays. I thought that once my children had left school, we would no longer be tied to school holidays, but my son went and married a teacher!