In article ,
Arthur Figgis wrote:
If 10 people for the centre save a few minutes each, is that always
worse than the people staying on the bus losing the minute?

It probably depends on the numbers of people in each group.

But yes, I'm quite prepared to believe that it would be better to
have a "set down only" stop in the middle of a village and then a
"set down and pick up" stop at the station in the outskirts.

But only if a lot of people are going use the former compared to the
number of people who are going to use the bus for the rest of it's
journey - and that means that it's only likely if the "village" is
actually a town, or it's the penultimate stop (or nearly penultimate).

In addition to all that, there may be some H&S issues about where
a driver may allow passengers to disenbark; I can imagine that a
risk assesment may be required for any potential drop off/pick up
site; this means that ad-hoc drop offs will be discouraged; this
will affect "emergency" bus replacement services (e.g. a "one under")
rather than planned ones (e.g. engineering work) more, as there's
less time to perform those assesments.

In the current world we live in, I can't blame bus drivers for
being risk averse.

I realise a replacement bus company isn't paid to think about
passengers, but the railway companies might consider what passengers are
trying to achieve with their travel.

Yes; but as Boltar said: Public transport is about doing the bestest
for the mostest; a door-to-door service is something you get from your
car or a taxi.

OMG, I just agreed with Boltar! I must have had too much ale!


--
Mike Bristow