Tom Barry wrote in
:

The river bus is good but expensive, and takes a lot of staff for the
number of passengers (just under two bendy buses, I reckon, with
something like five or six crew on board plus crew at the landing
piers).

It is indeed expensive to run; not just the staff costs but the boats and
piers require more maintenance than buses and bus stops. I was involved
with a project a few years ago looking at how the costs and benefits could
be reconciled sufficiently to allow the river buses to operate on the basis
of Oyster PAYG fares, but the cost to revenue gap seemed too large, even
with a hefty cross-subsidy.

This was in Ken's time and I don't know whether there has been any change
in thinking since then.

Peter

--
Peter Campbell Smith ~ London ~ pjcs00 (a) gmail.com