I think there needs to be a bit of clarity on "DRT isn't a viable business model". There are two parts...
- It isn't a commercially sustainable business model which is why they are all funded via various government funding streams. Having a driver sat in a Sprinter for 12 hours and carrying a handful of passengers is not a sustainable model. So funding comes from government...
- What most DRT schemes involve is a business (or sometimes a charity/volunteers) who are then paid to provide the service, whether that's Go Ahead, Stagecoach or CT4N. I can't see anyone accepting any revenue risk (as there's little revenue) so it boils down to whether any business has got their sums and costs right.
In some ways there is more pressure on the smaller operators to win or keep this business, and as such they are more likely to bid lower than they probably should. There are possibly some parallels to the Hulleys situation, although losing money on tendered services was probably one of their smaller problems.
A larger organisation can absorb a loss, move vehicles and staff around, and so on, much more easily than a smaller one can.
I'd imagine also that predicting demand is also one of the harder things to do with a DRT. I don't know how they are typically funded, but it's per journey then you've got that balance between having enough staff to cover the peaks while not having so many they are sitting around at quiet times. If, on the other hand, the funding covers a fixed number of staff then it becomes a balance between them leaving due to sitting around doing nothing, or being overworked.
With a charity of course it's even more difficult as it depends on enough turning up to run what has been booked.
In a way, it's not really a market that suits small operators. A larger operator could shuffle things more easily to resource it, being run in-house by the council is probably better still as you could have a pool of drivers across several departments who get called on as needed.
I also wonder if it being almost a taxi replacement service works, as you must get most journeys with only one or two users - being at the mercy of who books what. I almost wonder if a defined timetable would be better, but one that needs a minimum number of bookings to run.
