MIG wrote:

* Bring back conductors to help people in all sorts of ways and allow
tickets to be sold on the bus all day and night. (The extra revenue
would surely pay for them.)


a) No it wouldn't, have you seriously done any maths on this? £24k a
year + employers NI and other overheads * 8000 buses (or replace with
how many buses you think should be conductor-equipped, but it'll be four
figures). You're talking a lot of extra revenue attracted to pay for
that lot, which then drives further bus purchases* and thus more crew
etc. Basically the biggest single item of the bus operator's bill is
the crew *even with just the driver*.
b) Oyster

The periodic call of 'bring back the conductor' is one of those
nostalgic platitudes that curse us to second rate public transport in
the UK. Seriously, if you find yourself on the same side of the
argument as Quentin Letts it's a sign you've gone off the path of sanity
big time.

And now back to the oven.

Tom

* Note that Boris is reducing the bus network fairly substantially up to
2018, when you take into account the extra mileage worked by bendy
replacements and the former projected rise in mileage turning into a
reduction.