Most of the routes around Exeter are carrying fresh air and funded by the council or section 106. When this runs out the service will cease. Fares are overpriced. There used to be hourly X38 coaches Exeter to Plymouth which were busy and was killed off by adding all the villages. Stagecoach are wasting a lot of money there in inefficiencies. And ridiculous ideas such as to increase the service along Harrington Lane when it’s barely used enough as it is let alone doubling the frequency. Too many staff doing not a lot and little or no focus on making the services decent and reliable, such as the A service which suffers in reliability and nothing has been done about it in two years at least. I could go on but I’m going to stop here. These are just a few examples.
The X38 was only full during morning peak with fare paying passengers. Off peak was almost entirely pensioners so not profitable. Running such a service now would compete with Falcon and Megabus which makes no commercial sense. i know Falcon doesn't go to town but it's only 15 minutes on the P&R and often would be quicker than the X38 used to be as it misses the delays through Countess Wear.
I agree about Harrington Lane but isn't s106 money funding it and also in minibus days that part of the route in Pinhoe used to have buses every 12 mins and will generate more passengers than the F2 it replaces which does carry fresh air from Summerway to Pinhoe due to unreliability and long journey times. The F2 and B provided 4 buses an hour and so will the new service, so apart from the issue of passing points its not a huge change.
The A does bunch massively whenever St Thomas clogs but there's not much Stagecoach can do about that as the clogging seems to be quite random. The Thornpark Rise end can be very variable with journey times varying significantly based on passenger loadings (lots of slow boarding old people) and also 5 minutes delays often arise when buses meet at the bottom of the hill and have to reverse. The route does have long turn round times and long waiting times in town which usually are too much, but when St Thomas clogs it all goes pear shaped. To be honest the best solution is splitting all routes in town so the St Thomas issues don't affect the other side of town as invariably they screw up every route (which is what the L appears to be trialing). The problem is you can't split all routes as there's nowhere in town for the buses to wait.
Fares on Devon General were massively overpriced and Stagecoach have at least slowed the rate of increase and yes they are quite pricey but no more than other areas such as Arriva in Woking, Salisbury and Bournemouth, Taunton, Cornwall, etc.
