I agree, but we are only talking about pre-planned RR. As far as I know, that is often many weeks/months in advance - in most parts of the country it should be possible to pull sufficient resources together, in conjunction with any PSVAR coaches if available. The operators may, of course, suggest that such a provision comes at a cost........
It doesn’t matter if it’s planned or not, bus companies simply don’t have spare buses sat around. Sunday sees a few spare but most have work done on them then as they are already off the road. And where are you producing drivers from?
Over 50km (approx 35 miles) requires a tacho. Very few service buses have a tacho. I think of our service bus fleet here, out of approx 220 buses less than 10 have tacho fitted. If rail requires a tacho for all work then it would rule out service buses (unsure if it’s domestic or EU rules for RR, never done it)
EU hours apply for RRB and therefore tacho required. It is possible (but complex and messy) to do it on ‘paper records’ if the bus doesn’t have a tacho, but given this complexity most operators avoid it as it simply isn’t worth it.
Drivers are then stuck with EU driving hours for 14 days so most bus shifts don’t suit them. Another reason operators aren’t keen, and drivers neither as it means their hours, and therefore pay, is less.
The complexity of a coach company providing drivers and a bus company providing buses (as suggested upthread) is just so complex as to be not worth being considering. Even if there were these mythical spare buses.
The harsh reality is that RRB is just a bit extra work for coach companies. And work that doesn’t even pay all that well. they can take it or leave it. If you force them to spend hundreds of thousands on coaches they have no other need for, they’ll simply leave it. It’s not they’ve been ignoring this problem, they just have no need to be part of the solution. Either they can use the coaches they have now on RRB or they can’t. If they can’t they don’t do RRB and that’s the end of the matter. There isn’t a coach company out there that waits for RRB work to come in, they’ll manage happily without it. Anyone who thinks they’ll suddenly buy a fleet of new coaches is wrong.
The rail industry will have to solve this, and there are only three possible solutions
1) Convince government that all RRBs don’t need to have wheelchair access.
2) Recast timetables so that there are less trains and long periods when no trains at all, to allow maintainence to be carried out without altering the timetable.
3) Offering no replacement to passengers when trains cancelled. Adopting a hardball ‘tough’ approach.
Options 2 & 3 won’t go down well with the public, and will more than likely force to government into doing option 1. The common sense option all along.