"Paul Corfield" wrote i
On Mon, 19 Sep 2016 16:23:04 +0100, "Michael R N Dolbear" wrote:
Press release 02 September 2016
http://www.abellio.co.uk/news/abelli...hange-release/
At the same time, Abellio has sought to be released from county council
contracts for nine services that are subsidised by the council, none of
which are part of the ongoing Local Transport Review.
These {include} 458 Kingston-Staines, 514 Kingston-Addlestone, 515
Kingston-Guildford, 555 Heathrow-Hersham,
==
No reasons are known to me.
There was a BBC Radio Surrey interview with a rep from the bus user
group and from Surrey CC a few weeks ago.
You can guess what the bus user rep wanted. The man from SCC was not
sympathetic. He said cuts to date had all been very marginal and that
SCC had been in discussion with Abellio for months. Tellingly he said
the Council had already made extra interim payments to Abellio to
"keep them going". This rather suggests to me that something's gone
badly awry somewhere - costs, revenues, ridership. Several of the
routes in question have been moved off clockface timetables to help
reliability but once people can't easily remember when the bus is due
they stop using them. We have the same issues now on a small number
of TfL routes where run times became unsustainable so buses are every
65, 70, 80 or 90 minutes.
I've also seen a suggestion that funding from HAL may have been
reduced or simply declined as was intended and this has imperiled some
of the routes into Heathrow from Surrey. Any way round it doesn't
look very hopeful at all. In more "financially flush" times you might
seen TfL do something about the Portsmouth Rd corridor out to Esher or
even the bits of the 514/5 around Thames Ditton / West Molesey but not
now.
Thanks for the tip, my Googling kept getting hung up on last March's
consultation.
https://twitter.com/nwsurreybug gives NW Surrey Bus Users @nwsurreybug Sep
21
Danny Pike, {Wed} 21/09/2016
http://bbc.in/2ck5MXl NWSBUG Chair in
discussion about upcoming Abellio Surrey cuts. 8 min item starts 10 mins in.
And BBC iPlayer Radio finds it
As to reasons, the timetable changes of 9 April 2016 can't have helped nor
the mechanical breakdowns and as you say BAA/HAL may have withdrawn support
of the 555. Not sure about the industrial action.
--
Mike D