On 25 Dec, 15:04, Tom Barry wrote:
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.

I said it would be a nice thing to include, as would many things if
transport was run as a public service. I don't claim to have done
calculations on anything (such as the value to the city and country of
transport being run as a public service) but that doesn't mean that
they have no value.

It's not nostalgia. They don't have to do exactly the same job as in
the past, but I see that there is a value to having public transport
better staffed, and I would be arguing the same for railway stations
etc.