As is said above, they won't have taken the decision lightly. They haven't gone to consultation probably because they know that they can't really do anything (e.g. diverts that demand extra resources, increased fares, an off peak reduction that actually doesn't achieve any real savings). So if they go down the consultation route, there is nothing for them to gain except accusations that they consulted but it was a cynical exercise and are still doing the same thing anyway.
In fairness to First, one of the things that they are often criticised for (including by me!) is the apparently culture of Death By A Thousand Cuts...
...they might have inherited a route with a ten minute daytime frequency when they took over SBL/ Yorkshire Rider/ Mainline Group etc...
...but to save money they reduce the Saturday afternoon frequency to every fifteen...
...soon the whole Saturday frequency is every fifteen...
...then they reduce the weekday off-peak frequency to match the Saturday frequency, but retain a handful of peak extras...
...then the cost of the peak extras becomes a bit of a luxury so they are cut too...
...so the whole route is every fifteen minutes...
...but then it gets cut to every twenty minutes during the school holidays to save resources (at a quieter time of year, when drivers are wanting a summer holiday)...
...but then one year it doesn't get increased back to the fifteen minute frequency and remains at every twenty minutes once the schools go back...
...then, due to traffic congestion, it becomes easier to change it to an "every twenty five minutes" frequency at rush hour (because that's simpler than finding an additional vehicle to shore up the frequency to cope with longer journey times)...
...but then they find that passenger numbers have gone down so it becomes half hourly...
...then, to cope with twenty year old buses needing to be withdrawn, and the fact that there's no money to purchase brand new vehicles, they reduce the PVR down to every forty or forty five minutes...
...then they decide that a simpler to remember hourly frequency would be better...
...but due to a local independent going bust and the council having previous little money to pay for school trips, they arrange for First to run two school journeys a day, leaving hourly gaps at half eight in the morning and half three in the afternoon...
...then you look back and think, remember when that used to be a "turn up and go" service and now you can wait an hour between journeys? And the cuts I've mentioned will be replicated on the evening/Sunday service too, no doubt.
I exaggerate slightly, but at least with the X1 they are grasping the nettle and taking the tough decision now. Any of the other suggestions on here would probably just be postponing the inevitable - if they need to get rid of some of their oldest buses (to meet the Euro 6 requirement) then this is a fairly easy cut to make - keeping it going with regular cuts is just going to see passenger numbers dwindle and dwindle.
Cutting fares may cannibalise a few passengers from the *other* Hamilton - Glasgow services (by undercutting them), but that doesn't help much.
Of all the cuts that they could make, this is one that doesn't leave any large areas without a bus service.
Branded vehicles will not have the front touched.
