I'm not sure why you are being so antagonistic in your posts... I haven't said I've got any of the answers let alone all of them. I started this thread because it seems odd that given the similar circumstances we haven't had a similar outcome.
To take some of your points as to why the situation is different now...
1. Coaches on scheduled services are not required to be PSVAR compliant until 2020. Yes so there is the LEZ zone now, but the coach operators in the Home Counties would be silly not to be investing in compliant stock anyway seeing as though a large amount of the PH work they would be after would be day trips to London. As to the CPC... I really do not see how that impacts on the introduction of new services. AIRI there was a huge shortage of drivers in the mid 80's certainly within the home counties.
2. I never said that there were any commuter coaches terminating at LU stns {though incidently for many yrs there was the Green Line 702/712 which terminated at IIRC Walthamstow stn} I put the idea forward as a modern variation on the commuter coach.
3. Yes congestion may be worse now than in the 80's...however.. there are many more miles of bus lane in London now... and more importantly continuous bus lane.
4. How does the Underground being slow and packed in the 80's mean that commuter coaches into LU stns wouldn't work NOW?
6. yes there is hindsight... and yes most of the services slowly died but hindsight will also teach that the services flourished for a number of yrs and they only started to whither after the railways got their act together a majority services giving 10 yrs good yield... certainly the frontline lifetime of the coaches involved.
7. There is no real regulation of express services... as long as the last pick up and first set down points are more than 15 miles apart there is no need to register the service {ok so that increases costs as the service is then not eligible for BSOG}
now much is said about why commuter coaches can't compete with rail... and yet both Nat Ex and Megabus seem to do well competing with trains on intercity routes...
We've also now had confirmation from Thameslink that this chaos is likely to last at least another year... and as for the weekend timetable... god alone knows when that will gain any stability.
I wonder, is the fact that there is now compensation such as Delay Repay a factor? could it be that in the knowledge that if things go wrong rail commuters will likely have a much reduced cost mean that they are being more forgiving than they were in the 80's?
Sorry, not trying to be antagonistic; I do not have the definitive answers either. I am discounting the possibilities of the coach companies being in collusion with the railways, or that all entreprenurial flair has disappeared. So what else could it be?
In answer to your points:
1. You are strictly correct that coaches do not have to be PSVAR compliant on scheduled services until 2020. But coaches built after 2005 do, and for your coach to be LEZ compliant it would likely have to be built after this date. This seriously constricts the number of available vehicles, as most coach companies do not have these vehicles spare. By the mid 1980s the country had gone into a recession and staff shortages largely disappeared. It is well known that driver CPC requirement has caused numbers of drivers (particularly part time) to allow their licence to lapse, and contributes to the current shortage. Long spreadover duties for commuter coaches is not very helpful for staff recruitment and retention either.
2. The 702/703 services from Harlow area did indeed terminate at Walthamstow Central, but did not last, and are not operating today.
3. The M1 and A1 are notoriously congested and all this continuous bus lane in London has made little difference to coach journey times. (Buses stop at bus stops in the bus lanes and coaches wait helplessly behind them).
4. You replied to my point that Tubes were packed and slow now with the comment that they were packed then as well. Yes, and commuters not liking these conditions are one of the reasons why there are/were no commuter coaches terminating at suburban tube stations now or then.
6. Perhaps no-one wants to risk that kind of capital to buy frontline coaches for such a fickle market?
7. This is true, but all the current commuter services are registered so BSOG can be claimed. Presumably so the service can be operated with less cost, so cheaper fares can be charged. London coach stops, stands and parking are still issues that are more regulated, expensive and difficult to find than in the 1980s. Increasing fleet size on an Operators Licence is much more onerous now than in the 1980s.
Megabus does not compete in the commuter market at all, and Natex do so only peripherally. Both compete predominantly in the leisure market, where journey times are not so critical. Look at the journey planner - megabus has very few journeys arriving in London in the morning peak (one, and that is notoriously unreliable).
Thameslink might be in chaos (whatever that really means) for another year, but this chaos is probably still less worse to a commuer than any coach alternative. On some lines the attenuated 2018 timetable is still better than the 1980 frequency. Delay repay may well effectively make fares cheaper, but I am sure commuters would rather have the service better. I think, for all sorts of reasons, the coach commuter market is very different now to the 1980s. No one reason, just the combination of all of them being a disincentive to run Commuter coaches.
