I think what’s misunderstood is how London is operated; now if you know anything about what the privatisation did for buses. Yes in many ways improved the operation, there is a penalty now to operators for poor performance. A garage I was at, the GM was close to facing the Traffic Commissioner, the comparison to BVG is that its state run; similar but not the same as Lothian but similar. TfL can only impose the contractual audit to shake up the garages as it were. It’s not just about cost, it’s about necessity as well.
It doesn’t matter if passengers are on the bus or not they get paid per mile to operate a route, an example is route 7, it’s 4.50 a mile; factor in mechanical mileage loss, passenger taken ill, driver error, self curtailment... all these things TfL use to monitor but the issue with TfL is that it doesn’t have enough money to sustain itself due to the working from home.
It’s as simple as that really. There’s a lot of factors to operating a 5 year contract, basically it’s down to a team effort; Drivers being the main stay. They already cut costs by operating it one man, now it’s down to time; traffic is a major problem in any city but it’s the reason many buses are cut short or withdrawn.
It doesn’t matter if passengers are on the bus or not they get paid per mile to operate a route, an example is route 7, it’s 4.50 a mile; factor in mechanical mileage loss, passenger taken ill, driver error, self curtailment... all these things TfL use to monitor but the issue with TfL is that it doesn’t have enough money to sustain itself due to the working from home.
It’s as simple as that really. There’s a lot of factors to operating a 5 year contract, basically it’s down to a team effort; Drivers being the main stay. They already cut costs by operating it one man, now it’s down to time; traffic is a major problem in any city but it’s the reason many buses are cut short or withdrawn.