what's tripe?
fact: arriva deregistered service 20 completely 3 months ago
fact: one month later they changed their minds and registered service 20 to run 15 mins ahead of 701 AND rerouted back into swansea
fact: 2 days after new timetable started they announce they are consulting their staff about closing aber depot
fact: if they are consulting their staff now they have been planning the closure for months... they will only "consult" staff once they have fully formulated their plans.
I stand by my previous comments... the changes to service 20 were a deliberate attempt to destabilise the 701. a spiteful trick on the basis of "we don't want it but we'll make sure no-one else has it" a trick that arriva plays throughout ALL it's operations right across the uk
Now, it seems that local operators like Mid Wales Travel and Coach Travel Wales are very keen to be seen as 'hard done by' and as underdogs and victims of the corporate monster that is Arriva - evident from regular local newspaper articles of the last few years, or the continual carping on one company's website about the unfairness of changes to free travel scheme rules, unfair competition from non-local firms, blah, blah, etc.
But is the 701 really so significant that Arriva's planning is going to be based around making some spiteful last attack on it as they retreat from the area? Logically, what company would waste money and resource if they were withdrawing and had nothing to gain? They're a company with a bottom line to consider, not a fly-by-night that can throw money away on grudges.
TeflonLettuce asserts that Arriva recently deregistered the 20 and then reregistered it as some kind of wrecking move. But unless I'm mistaken, nothing in any of the Notices and Proceedings published since June shows an outright deregistration. Arriva registered changes to the timings effective 29 September twice: once appearing in the 20 June N&P and then again in the 15 August N&P, when they also added the previously-mentioned 40c. I can't see that as particularly underhand, any more than I could the deregistration and re-registration of the 701 on consecutive days to transfer it to a different trading entity.
So, it seems that the most recent changes to Arriva's route were planned in early August. We have no way of knowing whether Arriva were set on closing the depot that far back, seeing as the story has only broken now in October. Is it not more likely that they simply made a straightforward change to the timetable for their own commercial benefit (with the unavoidable 56 day lead time), but that these changes were overtaken by events as head office finally lost patience with the numbers not stacking up?
Of course, the change in timing of the 20 and the reinstatement of a Swansea stop presumably was driven by a desire to compete against the 701 - but that's the open market in operation! It's not pretty, but it's legal and entirely logical if that is the time of day the public want to travel. Surely you'd expect Arriva to try and make it pay before throwing in the towel? Especially if there's a likelihood of redundancy consultations where staff would quite rightly question why closure was being considered without any attempt to grow trade?
As for dirty tricks and destabilising moves, just think back to how easily Arriva rolled over to local competitors muscling in on 'their' Aberystwyth town and local routes (e.g. town circular, Penparcau, Borth, Penrhyncoch, Machynlleth). They have no track record in fighting competition effectively locally - there was a short-lived and very poorly-executed attempt to revamp local routes a couple of years back, but that's about it. No attempt to beat the competition in terms of fares, timings or frequency - in fact they quite quickly reduced frequency once Mid Wales Travel started running competing local services.
I obviously don't know what Arriva's real motivations are - but I don't think they have either the nous for, or the interest in, a bus war in Aberystwyth!