I wanted to raise the issue below, which demonstrates why so many independent operators may be moving away from commercial bus services or, indeed, leaving the industry outright.
I thought I would share the following with you – it is my Q3 English National Concessionary Travel Scheme statistics.
We do very little commercial all-day work by choice.
So, in a nutshell: We undertook 458 journeys which resulted in £1,031 in revenue forgone. Our reimbursement amounted to £422.
In essence, that resulted in a loss of some 55% – or, payment of only around 45% of actual revenue, whichever number you prefer.
Multiply this for the big players, and you can see how it’s a tidy sum that the industry is losing – both in revenue, and in operators!
It is also probably why some standard fares are so expensive, as they likely compensate for these losses. But this is counterproductive and, in the end, deters users due to the added cost.
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