robertclark125
Established Member
If a bus firm bids for a rail franchise, is it a condition of the franchise that if a bus firm wins the bid, it MUST have bus operations in at least part of the franchise area?
Cheers. On another forum, someone suggests DBS (owners of Arriva) may be bidding for Scotrail, or have won it, and the claim was they can't bid as they don't have bus operations in the area. I didn't think it was true, but wanted to double check.
Cheers. On another forum, someone suggests DBS (owners of Arriva) may be bidding for Scotrail, or have won it, and the claim was they can't bid as they don't have bus operations in the area. I didn't think it was true, but wanted to double check.
That all sounds distinctly like bollocks
However Arriva do (did?) have operations in the Glasgow area.
Agreed - apart from FSR's dominance of Scottish buses (they had 55% of the market last time I heard a figure) I can't think of any example of a bus company's operations having any bearing on its rail services (either running lots of buses or running no buses).
If a bus firm bids for a rail franchise, is it a condition of the franchise that if a bus firm wins the bid, it MUST have bus operations in at least part of the franchise area?
Simple answer: London Midland, part-owned by Go-Ahead, doesn't.
[Pendant] London [/Pendant]
And in any event these aren't commercial services in the same sense as elsewhere, as (thankfully) the London bus market operates in a substantially different way. So (for example) there are no competition issues between Go-Ahead's extensive south London bus operations and Govia's Southern & South Eastern rail franchises.Services within London is hardly in LM's remit, though. Being as they only regularly serve two stations in London anyway.
That all sounds distinctly like bollocks.
I'd be curious to know where the person who said that is getting their information from - that's if they actually have any.
Agreed. There aren't any Virgin buses, for a start!
Why would there be a requirement to run local buses in the area? The only benefit I can see is being able to provide rail replacement buses more easily, but that could easily be contracted out to a totally independent company.