On 04/03/2019 16:15, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 21:39:24 on Sat, 2 Mar
2019, John Williamson remarked:
On 02/03/2019 20:47, Roland Perry wrote:
But a bus an hour is enough to go out for the day - after all that's
theÂ* service on a great deal of the railways (outside of very big
cities).

The problem in many villages is that the only buses you see are either
school contract vehicles, which do a run in to town in the morning and
come back out at about 4 pm, or a weekly service, which is usually on
market day, and lets you stay in town for three hours or so to do your
shopping.

I agree that's a problem for all potential bus users, but the size of
the market for such villages is so small (even if the fares were zero
for everyone) that the best solution is a community "dial a ride".
...
Other services that are going are ones in the suburbs outside core
hours, so the last bus which used to be at 23:00 or even later, now
runs at 20:00, or 21:00 on a Saturday.

Ditto. If they are running almost empty, which they tend to, they are
easy prey.

What I've never quite understood is why no-one has started to join up
two things that are suffering for various reasons - public transport and
pubs. Particularly as use of the latter often requires the use of the
former.

Community dial-a-ride vehicles are often unused (or underused) in the
evenings, so why don't rural pubs subsidise them (or as a minimum help
organise a service) to use for carrying punters of an evening?

Often a small town can be surrounded by several villages and residents
of the villages may want a night out in town and vice versa (assuming
the nice village boozer hasn't shut down).

Even without pub subsidies, these are servicees that would attract a
fare that may make the "community" uses of such vehicles viable outside
of when they are doing the pub run.