But from reading what F Great Eastern has said, one massive issue has to be the fact that Expressway journeys are serving all sorts of places en route, when a local service, acting as a feeder into the expressway network, doing two jobs in one, would be a more efficient use of resources.
The problem is in most avenue that option is no longer open to them because they were slow off the starting blocks and more proactive operators have beat them to it, which has meant they are left with the choices of pretty much running the route as is or nothing on some corridors because of their own lack of service development in the past.
Express commercial services and multistop commercial services are considered as different routes, so for example on Dublin to Cork, there would be two licenses allowed for non stop and two licenses for multi-stop services, all are operate on a first come first served basis and once the two slots are gone no more services will be permitted.
Dublin to Cork is a good example to use here.
At one point there were two multi-stop operators for Dublin to Cork, First Aircoach, operating eight times daily and Bus Eireann operating six times daily in each direction. Because of this nobody else could operate services on such route because of the fact that both licenses were taken up, however operators were free to apply for express versions of this route, but nobody chose to do so.
In late 2011, Aircoach applied for Dublin to Cork non stop operating 17 times per day and were granted a license, and in early 2012, Gobus also applied for a license and were granted one. This meant that both available express licenses were taken and BE were locked out of being able to get their own license for this corridor, and were left with a stopping service previously contained a mixture of end to end customers and those from intermediate Towns, which lost pretty much all of it's end to end customers.
Some months later, Aircoach relinquished their multi-stop licenses, feeling there was far more value in just operating a non stop service, freeing a multi-stop license up, which Dublin Coach later took themselves, serving a different route via different towns/cities between Dublin and Cork than the multi-stop service which was offered by Bus Eireann.
The end result is that BE are left with a service that can no longer attract customers between Dublin and Cork, who have a better, faster and more regular service available to them, and are solely dependent on traffic to/from the intermediate Towns which is not enough for the service to break even. In a lot of cases BE want to cut services like these back to make them more financially viable, however the unions are resistant to this since it will cost jobs.
The problem is that BE in a lot of cases, have gone from being first in a lot of corridors to being third, because other operators have got in non stop or express licenses before BE, and by the time BE applies for a license it is too late since the licenses are already gone. They then lose customers to the new express operators, which has a serious impact on the services viability, but they are unable to restructure the services by reducing frequency as the union will not tolerate any job losses under any circumstances.
Even on the few services where they DO have a good position license wise and have been pro-active in developing their services they are also losing the battle (by a smaller margin) because their salaries are approx 25% higher than the competition so the privates are able to undercut them by a few euro per trip, and again the unions will not tolerate a pay cut or any reduction in terms and conditions of their workers.
Basically there is no one party totally to blame here, it is management who have not developed services at the pace required in the fear of upsetting someone, which has seen more commercially savvy operators spot a niche and exploit this whilst BE are sitting back on their heels, whilst at the same time when that has happened, management have not been able to cut the services back or adjust costs to the new operating environment, through fear of strikes from the union every time service cuts or pay reductions are mentioned.
There has even been some suggestions from unions that Expressway should be granted special dispensation to run services on all routes where they currently don't have one of the two licenses and the company should be given special status, however that will almost certainly result in a legal challenge from the privates, since it is essentially akin to allowing full deregulation for BE services but requiring regulation on private services, which would discourage in any investment from the private sector.