Yet it's certainly not that way in Perth (and possibly Adelaide although I'm not familiar enough with the situation there) and TSA is one of the very successful operators over there. I think we still have to wait for everything to settle down, it's early days. TSA has obviously had to quickly get a lot of drivers from everywhere and train some of them as the supply of displaced drivers from STA was not enough. I would think that it's a bit early to judge.burrumbus wrote:The current private operators are merely operators of contract services to the government since 2007.
The privates of the past were masters of their own businesses which had to make profits,purchase their own fleets,out of the take from their route services.Therefore standards were very important in attracting pax.
The current privates just do not have that imperitive to maintain standards and it shows all over Sydney
Re speed of driving, I remember when it was the DGT drivers who were the wild ones and the privates quite sedate! In the first decade or so after the end of the trams, a lot of DGT drivers were ex tram drivers and they drove (or tried to drive) the buses like they did the trams, except as far the poor passengers were concerned, the buses did not have the smoothness and pax were thrown around like peas in a tin. This wild driving style persisted for many years - maybe until all the tram drivers retired?!
Nowadays the tram drivers here don't know how to drive a tram - or maybe more correctly, aren't allowed to by their nannying managements.