First has not really worked out how to do well with rural-outer urban routes. In Cornwall the First WN MD's had a habit of resigning and starting up a locally based competing service. At Callander the old SMT operation had a 3-bus garage and local drivers so that the morning commuter trips did not run 'dead' miles, but First went to centralise (Larbert) for economies of scale.
I suspect that Eve's and Munro will move to fill some gaps, and MacEwans might even try to get back the X95 (shudder). We may well need to work out a new model here and one that is being tried on the Isle of Wight. A big bus operation has the top quality facilities to maintain buses, and bulk buying power to run a big fleet. They provide the bus that operates from the village to a 'local' or community bus operation, who offer the local base and locally 'employed' staff. The costly issue of having to keep a spare bus to run the service when a main bus is in for its weekly service whether you run 1 or 6 buses, is also sorted.
I found the Cornish operation - managed at the top level from BRISTOL had managers stretched over a huge geographical area, and no surprise recently to hear that Stagecoach had bought the Barnstaple Depot and taken over the main routes. Stagecoach incidently have some interesting tread lightly arrangements - in Penrith they rent space in a haulage yard instead of running their own bus garage and swap-over buses to get them serviced on the Carlisle-Penrith services. Some of First's thinking is perhaps too 'conventional' for the services they have found themselves operating?
That said Arriva have now sold-up in Scotland, and their Former MD is now MD with McGills, who have become a significant Glasgow and Clyde Coast operator, whilst Ian Craig's brother (West Coast Motors) has made significant inroads on First's monopoly of Glasgow in North West (having just taken over John Morrow) and Henderson's is the strong player in SE quadrant/N Lanarkshire.
Hendersons are generally OK with bikes on board outside peak times - vary handy when heading out to Strathaven from Hamilton, and West Coast officially carries bikes on some of their routes.
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