Services that mostly carry fresh air

[woody38]

When ever I see a bus I always look at it to see how many people are on it, don't understand why I do it just something I have always done, back to the subject in the Wolverhampton area the routes by me that never seem to have more than 5 or 6 people on them sometimes less are the 25 Wolverhampton-Pendeford via Bilston & Wednesfield & the 32/33 Northwood Park Circulars the 32 does have competition I realise that but surely these routes can't make any money for NXWM

[2900]

My kind of services that carry fresh air the old 128/9 to blackheath 127 blackheath/ Dudley late evening with a good metro bus fantastic, I have done many a journey not a single sole gets on. 

[monkeyjoe]

I'm not sure I would describe the air as fresh

[Trident 4194]

I'm not sure I would describe the air as fresh

Not with the lack of investment near you ;). To me there are always parts of a route which don't carry many people but overall not too bad.

[Ashley 60171]

Plenty of demand in the peaks on 32/33. 25 is quieter at that end but still an important link from that side of town to Wednesfjeld etc.

[Sh4318]

From what I've seen, the 243 from MH

[Trident 4194]

From what I've seen, the 243 from MH

Agreed and 244

[j789]

I have spoken with a number of people 'in the know' in management etc about how many passengers are needed to run a service commercially. Whilst there is no exact figure as it depends on the vehicle/ terrain/ distance travelled over an hour etc, but a generic 30 passengers an hour (paying or concession) was surmised as being the minimum to run a service profitably. Like I say, this is not precise because of so many other factors but can at least suggest a round figure for an 'average' service around a town or city, country routes being different. Therefore, a double decker may look empty but could still be making a profit even with only a few passengers on at any time, as long as there was a constant 'few' getting on along the route.

As a very general guessitimate to costs per hour (with a bus doing an average 20 miles in that time) I'd say:
£10 for the driver
£7 fuel
£5 for engineers/cleaners/ management etc - this is obviously averaged over the whole garage fleet as each bus doesn't need a separate engineer!
Deprivation of vehicle value - hard to say what that would be.

But I would say a conservative guess would be £25 per vehicle per hour. Would be interesting to know if Tony had a better idea of costs (again I know this would vary route to route).

It's an interesting point.

[j789]

or rather depreciation of vehicle value, not deprivation!

[GeminiFan1991]

It's also worth noting that some services are paid for. I read a post on here that mentioned the 97A journeys are paid for by either the Airport/ NEC so even if passengers don't board the bus, the service is still "Profitable" in the general sense as it's running costs have been covered. I'd imagine a similar thing happens for work or private related runs. I know for the Amazon services, their workers had to foot the bill but I think Cap Gemini they board free as I had an interview there and I think it was mentioned on a leaflet.

[monkeyjoe]

A bus doing 20 miles in an hour Really????

[Kevin]

Worth remembering the quietest routes are likely to be subsidised to an extent by the authorities so don't necessarily even have to carry even half that

A bus doing 20 miles in an hour Really????

As an average it ain't a bad shout, perhaps more like 15 in urban areas
X51 does a round trip in just over an hour, there's 20 miles, yeah it's express but also fully within built up areas, country routes could easily be quicker. Just because you're used to London traffic

[karl724223]

Every arriva bus I saw up Dudley last night

[Ashley 60171]

Another figure I have heard of (unsure if it's hard fact) but a service has to carry at least 10 people a journey end to end for it to be considered "socially necessary".

[Steveminor]

Another figure I have heard of (unsure if it's hard fact) but a service has to carry at least 10 people a journey end to end for it to be considered "socially necessary".

Yes but then they take into account the cost per passenger to deem if the service could run or not.