The new 126 will not be sustainable or even operable unless North Somerset have made concessions over what was tendered, which was impossible to operate. Part of the service included a school service from Churchill to Wrington requiring high capacity vehicles, yet the route being proposed around Elborough, Locking and Hutton would not be safe for anything larger than a very small Solo. The timetable was also completely different on School Holidays to School Terms for the whole day, which is very customer unfriendly. Part of the problem is that the service was tendered by Somerset Council, whose tendering system is little short of a protectionist racket. To my knowledge, two operators have shown an interest, neither of whom are on the Somerset tendering system. One of them had proposed to completely restructure the service as tendered on the basis of it not being safely operable.
North Somerset Councillors, particularly leader Mike Bell, seem to be under the impression that the service is a done deal. But then, he and previous council leaders have got a track record of repeating untruths fed to them by their staff. If it is going to happen, then we should be seeing a registration very shortly to start in January as the full 70 day notice period would be this weekend.
