I merely report the facts.
According to the latest bus use statistics (2017/18); passenger journeys overall have stabilised, concessionary journeys have stabilised, net support for bus services has more than doubled (from a pitiful amount to a slightly less pitiful amount - £22K to a whopping £55k). Overall concessionary travel expenditure by Stoke TCA continues to decline with the average per journey wobbling around but on a downward trajectory: £1.00 / £0.95 / £0.79 / £0.93 / £0.91 over the past five years.
Whether evening services
were financially sustainable, when there was a decent level of service is a moot point.
Now I suspect the tipping point has been reached where they are wholly unattractive to anyone but the truly desperate. Why would anyone want to wait up to an hour for a bus after they have finished work or visited the hospital (in the evening or on Sunday). Especially if a connection into another hourly service has to be made and then the bus only goes part way home and they have to walk the remainder of the way?
All I hear in the pub is grumbles from people about how they can't use the bus anymore, even to get home from the city centre. Some will take taxis, some will get picked up by a partner, some go home really early ie 1830! and others will stay at home. Looking at the court reports, many people simply drink-drive (although they perhaps wouldn't be catching the bus anyway). Personally, my days of train trips are over because we have a minimal evening train service (Crewe to Derby) and there are so few buses from the station it is quicker to get from London to Stoke than it is from Stoke to Blythe Bridge (150 miles and 7 miles)!
I don't have any detailed financial or ridership information and I doubt Mr Eggleton is going to give me any! The services I used to use were reasonably well used, certainly up to mid-evening (say 2130), with passengers numbers in double figures. It depends on how First account for the revenue from multi-journey tickets. In the days of old, often the driver would simply not put anything into the ticket machine so, according the hard statistics, hardly anyone was on the bus. Similarly buying a cash single from any point on the old circuitous Newcastle - Meir - Hanley route would often result in a ticket bearing the boarding stage of Newcastle and an alighting stage of Hanley. Again the hard statistics would reveal no passengers travelling from Stoke to Meir, so why provide that service when a shorter one appears to cater for the apparent demand. Now of course the scanning of tickets/QR codes is much more comprehensive but that will only record current passengers, not potential passengers who wish to travel but cannot.
As for other operators, providing an evening service
.
Taxico have 25% of their fleet on the road in the evening until after midnight (one bus out of four).
Scraggs last bus terminates at 1700.
Going My Way (or not actually, as it happens) AKA Stantons: all in bed by tea-time.
D & G have a single bus out after 2100 on the 14W (I think that is where the £55k gets spent). Most D & G buses are youngsters and have to be in bed before 2000.
