In Essex someone needs to get the balls to push First out. It wouldn't be hard. Scheduling services right across their muddle (one really can't dignify it with the title of network) which they have neither the vehicles nor drivers for. A total mess. It's not an occasional problem, as everywhere; it's been constant for years. And then deliberately bidding at rock bottom prices for anything they can lay their hands on for the sake of it. The point of course is to "scare off" any competition. B****r the passengers. And throwing every bit of old junk they can lay their hands on into the mess, then hoping for the best and looking the other way. Typical cowboy tactics. I'm not sure whether the drivers or passengers are the more fed up to the back teeth with it. It makes BoS, Madchester, Potteries or any other of the so-called "basket cases" look competent and well-resourced. First themselves seem fed up, even the cascades all go into rural Norfolk. It isn't demand, it's operational incompetence, pure and simple. Zombies that can't be budged. First just leave them to it.
It'll run itself into the ground eventually if they wait long enough. But that laissez faire anarchy isn't what everyone tells us they're about, and, it seems, no one else in the country has to put up with it.
Generally the TC seems to have done a decent job of getting rid of the cowboys from the industry. FEx seem though to have successfully called their bluff. Why? And First Bus' bluff too. Though that's not so hard.
Of course, when anyone else can get their hands on it, there is a miraculous improvement. Blame bad bus territory if we want. The evidence is different.
