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I suspect the land of the RENFE (amongst others) contributed much more, and of course increasing car ownership making 'boarding house' and 'sea front' holidays less popular.

In particular to induce (by cheaper fares) some of the traffic to use poorly used slower local services, which would otherwise likely be attenuated or withdrawn completely, and minimising the need to expensively augment the express services

Because it would cost lots of money for relatively little advantage.

In the County of my residence, the quantity of taxis/private hire vehicles is determined by the number of Local Authority School / Special Educational Need contracts available. Hence it is not possible to hire one of these vehicles for about 90 minutes in the morning and afternoon on...

Who, in many cases, will be totally unprepared for it.

I don't suppose the system was designed for the £2 fare cap, and none (or only a very small minority) of routes before the cap were flat fare. If you are referring to the possibility of getting on at or after the last stage (and therefore only that fare can apply to you), I think that would...

I suspect this is because the £2 fare cap was introduced as a time limited scheme, and the bus company does not wish people to get out of the habit of tapping out, for when / if the fares go back to previous levels (or to a graduated/zonal system) ?

I really can't see a £2 flat fare being retained in the future - this is too cheap for the really long routes as you mention. Either the routes will get shortened (which will inconvenience some, and in some areas will result in a nonsense ) or some sort of zonal or coarsened graduated system...

The bus companies will soon go bankrupt if they contemplate doing this, so I think it unlikely.

When I started work my pension age was 65 and is (was) 66, but living standards and medical advances have put my generation and later in a much better position and health, and I certainly don't begrudge the lost year of pension. Life expectancy may well be decreasing but not to anything like...

As I said, this is fine in the normal way of life. It is not fine if you can't afford to run the house which you have lived in for many years because of Government fiscal action based on the nominal value of such a house. Surely the best way to deal with that is with inheritance tax, (on the...

The main reason Councils would not do that is the onerous additional conditions (and expense in meeting them) of running a public service - the vehicles must be PSVAR compliant, have ticket machines, fares to be accounted for, service registered and operated strictly in accordance with (no...

But if you can't afford to run the house which you have lived in for many years because of Government fiscal action based on the nominal value of such house, then that is a different matter. That does not happen to 'the rest of the world'. Downsizing will mean a disruptive move, and likely...

Horses for courses I think. There is no doubt some money to be saved, larger at some Authorities than others, but it is no panacea, and certainly not a 'fortune' compared to the size of the school transport budget. There will also be plenty of 'difficult (aka unpoular) decisions' to be...

You may well be right (but I am not holding my breath!), but prosecution of the perpetrators has nothing to do with payment of compensation to the sub-postmasters wrongly convicted, bankrupted etc

But it did work for Beeching - the lines got closed and the railways got shot of the losses incurred in operating and maintaining them. I don't think there was ever any intention to 'guarantee' the operation of any bus service in perpetuity, or for that bus service to be part of the rail...

Quite. But there is not much of that to spread around, so inevitably not everywhere can have it.

There are lots of non-compliant coaches, and many school buses are operated by these. If they are non-compliant, they cannot be used by any passenger paying a separate fare, which includes 'spare seats' sold by the Local Authority. It doesn't have to be 'normal passengers' - a school child...

I guess that if you compete against the big boys then you need deep pockets and the commercial acumen that they may not have on the ground. Otherwise you've had it (and that applies in most walks of life). I don't think that necessarily applies for tendered work, but a small operator needs to...

Milton Keynes is no outlier in this regard, certainly in the 'shire' county areas. The number of small operators prepared to do local bus work is shrinking and shrinking, mostly due to the regulatory hurdles and technology requirements (PSVAR, BODS, ETMs etc etc) and the 'Day-in-Day out' nature...