Bexleybus falls flat?
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• London's most-recently hived-off local bus service, Bexleybus, has "fallen flat on its face" and alienated its formerly enthusiastic staff, says the transport-users pressure group Capital.
The operation, still part of London Buses but running as a separate company, has cut its overheads in what has been described as a "radical set-up with the unions" — its 107 buses have only 31 maintenance and 23 supervisory and administration staff.
Delays of over an hour are common and up to seven buses in a row fail to appear, Capital alleges: "The service is so bad that passengers have given Be:deybus a new name — Bltuiderbus."
The campaign lists a catalogue of complaints, including the case of a driver who had to tell passengers to get off at the bottom of a steep hill and walk up because the bus was too unfit to carry them.
London Buses has hit back at the allegations. Claims that there are too few buses are "pure fiction", it says, and all its second-hand buses have been fully overhauled and refurbished.
Garry Laurence, general manager of Bexley, dismisses the allegations as "absolute rubbish — they are so wrong it hardly bears comment".