we've not been able to secure more replacement buses this evening
It was posted after eight o'clock on a Friday night during a period where many bus companies have had to cut their established services to accommodate the number of drivers off work with Covid / self isolating due to coming into contact with people with Covid (so very little slack in the system) - e.g. First have trimmed back their Edinburgh - Livingston journeys because they simply don't have enough drivers right now (some other bus operators have had to subcontract routes to independent operators to try to make up for staffing shortfalls)...
...any bus drivers who may have been available earlier in the day will already have had a drink inside them by that time on a Friday night and therefore not be able to drop everything to get behind the wheel...
...it's the middle of the school holidays, which means some local drivers will be far away from Edinburgh...
...what contingency should there be in such circumstances?
It's obviously not great news and I feel sorry for affected passengers, but I think that this is one of those unfortunate situations where we have to accept that a bad thing has happened and there's no chance of getting much of a "Plan B" into operation - I don't know what the alternative should be?
Easy to blame the TOC, sure, but I don't think there's any "blame" here