Mizter T wrote:

(Both times I'd already hit my cap but in other circumstances I'd have
wound up paying twice needlessly.)

When a bus is terminated short then passengers should be able to get a
transfer ticket from the driver in order to continue their journey on
another bus - however these often don't seem to be proffered by the driver
without prompting. (On a recent occasion when the bus was terminated short
a controller at the bus stop shepherded all the pax on the bus going
nowhere across to another bus that had just arrived at the stop, having
conversed with the driver.)

Any idea what was going on in the first example you give?

No - the driver just announced the bus was being taken out of service and
opened the middle & rear doors (it was a bendy). It would not have been easy
to reach the driver because of the flow and the front doors not being open.
But I doubt everyone could have fitted onto a single other bus arriving at
the stop so the driver conversing with other drivers would not have made
much difference either.