Not if... they are commercial managers. Without wishing to identify them or their employers, both of them have worked in the North West and one of the major successes in the region was as a consequence of their focussing on an existing route and developing it. One of them is now a commercial manager in another part of the country and is busy trying to craft a network that is viable despite cuts and ENCTS remuneration and the overall collapse of the local retail trade (before Covid). So they are experienced managers with 20+ years experience..... so they know the realities of life.
There are many reasons why bus services aren't "working" as you would say. First of all, modern developments (as has been explained ad nauseum) are difficult to serve, especially with conventional vehicles. Once upon a time, you could send a van derived minibus there with a driver paid less but these days, it is difficult to make it pay with higher driver wages and PSVAR requirements. Stagecoach tried in Ashford with "little and often" but the extra resources needed for higher frequencies didn't result in sufficient additional revenue. Then you have, as I point out, the collapsing footfall on the high street. More internet shopping has reduced high street footfall massively - what's a bus commercial manager supposed to do about that?
As for serving out of town locations, that is not straight forward. Once upon a time, you would have masses of workers in major factories or other sites (e.g. collieries) living close to them. Nowadays, that is more disparate and people now travel further to work than they did in 1992 and in many places, there simply aren't the numbers of people. There are some distribution parks that will have large warehouses that will have sufficient mass of possible punters and indeed, some bus companies do try to serve such markets, sometimes supported with developer funding.
Other large out of town locations are hospitals (for both workers and employers), universities and the larger shopping centres. And indeed, the bus companies DO seek to target those markets. The growth in higher education has seen many firms develop their route networks to exploit this. This can be via a tie up with the university and/or Student Union. There are many examples of this across the UK
These are things that bus companies actually do. You just don't actually realise that they do it, and I'm unclear as to where your assertion that it's easier than you think comes from? Is this based on your professional experience?
I can understand you not wanting to identify who you are talking about.
I don't know why you keep going on about modern developments being difficult to serve. Each development obviously should be treated on their own merits so yes, some are difficult to serve, some aren't.
Distribution parks can be well served if there is a will to make them work. Omega in Warrington now has a commercial works bus linking to the many different shift times. You can often find a full decker on the route. This was given funding to start with but was then made commercial because of the uptake. Distribution parks are difficult to make money normally because the bus stops are no where near the staff entrances and/or buses do not serve all shift patterns (IE no point trying to pick up at 2pm if you don't drop them off at 6am (based on a normal industrial shift time). There aren't many worker buses out there though which proves that these markets are not always looked into. Also some distribution parks have huge usage but only to 1 area so the other surrounding towns despite having many workers residing but working on the distribution park. I'll use Omega again as an example having no link to St Helens because no one will trial it.
Out of town locations can be served and with the growing popularity of them, more time should be taken to serve them. There are plenty of retail parks which buses run alongside but do not stop inside or close to.
Universities, almost always have good buses, I do not dispute that (and have never brought it up before). Colleges, an example of good practise is Truro I think it is with Kernow sending most buses into the site. A bad example would be Deeside College which duplicates many commercial bus routes with their college buses. By negotiating with the college, there will likely be some leeway if you can guarantee no reduction in the quality of service but can provide a reduced cost.
I can confirm from experience that many bus companies do NOT try to serve these new areas unless there is funding in place and can't negotiate with colleges that well as it is proven with the amount of college bus routes which duplicate bus routes (both commercial and tendered). Your friends might do it but it isn't the 'norm' in the industry.
It really isn't. You can't use the registration of a commercial route to attempt to steal a competitive council tender. You can, of course, claim the tender is abstracting revenue from your commercial service, but then you're on your own. And if a tendered route was so amazingly profitable it wouldn't be on a tender.
It is not an automatic right no but it can always be negotiated. If you can save money on the tender by not serving an area, the council could provide deminims support to the new route to a lower sum. Ie, if the change means that the tender cost is reduced by 50k, the council could then provide 30k deminims support to the new service to 'divert' to the new area. Councils pay quite often for buses to 'divert' into an area that they would serve anyway without the funding.
What potential? As explained above, they tried Harrogate to York and it didn't make money. Harrogate to Skipton? Sheep don't usually take the bus. Keighley to Halifax? Maybe, but it's interesting that Transdev haven't ever stepped in when First withdrew their commercial service over ten years ago. They did to Hebden Bridge, even improving the service from a couple of buses a day to hourly. Transdev expanded the Ilkley service through to Otley and then the airport.
Oh sorry, I didn't know you had to post all your route suggestions on a forum. The route suggestions I keep to myself to send to the relevant people rather than post them on here for you to needlessly attempt to find holes in them.
Routes with no demand don't run because they don't make money.
I've never disputed that so once again, you are trying to find a hole in my post for no reason but to cause an argument.
In many cases, you do not know the full demand though when you start up. You have people who ask which can help give an idea but the only time you find out the full demand is when you trial it and people slowly start using it. What was meant by the statement was that end to end demand isn't what matters since there are lots of local travel opportunities and also if the demand is for elderly, it won't make money so you have to establish more than just overall demand but specifically the demographics of that demand.
You have to abstract numbers from some existing services somewhere. Every single new route does that. You abstract passengers to start with while you try to encourage newer passengers onto the bus. If someone goes from A to B five days per week to shop and they change to go from A to B three times per week and go from A to C twice per week, you are abstracting passengers from other routes.
While you can transfer demand, you also provide links from these areas into other areas which can stimulate more demand. Someone might use their local tendered bus once per week. A commercial route with new links might be used twice per week though (once to justify their existing journey and an additional journey to another place which the new bus links to). That is stimulating demand. Also if a person uses the bus once per week into town, the new route might link them to their workplace so they then use it for work and then for their existing shopping journey. With the new links, it links to more workplaces and some people will then use the bus when currently they can't.
Similar to what you say, there are only finite amount of people who want to use the bus and getting new people onto a bus takes years. Do you 1, spend years on a loss making route hoping people change their travel habits or 2, abstract some revenue/passengers while you build up the route for the longer term. No route is successful from day 1 and it will certainly not be successful for a long time unless you abstract some revenue from other routes and try to stimulate demand that way.
As Deerfold has said, the 62 as an example was taking over a tender between Otley and the Airport which is exactly what I was suggestions should happen more regularly. Take over in part or in full tenders to help subsidise new routes.