National Express Coach Station in Liverpool to close

[stankevitch]

RE: National Express Coach Station in Liverpool to close

(21/02/2016 17:46)Dentonian Wrote:  Back on Topic, I suppose Ryanair's model is similar to Megabus. Not so much in the location of the terminal, but the fact that many flights are very early or very late, especially to larger destinations. Consequently, any fare savings are more than balanced out by unnecessary accomodation costs and extra time off work

Megabus is similar to Ryanair in more ways than you'd think. They most rely heavy on a yeild management model, use cheap stops and advertise solely on that fact. Its a give, look at all the travel companies around the world that use similar models and look at their success.

Anyways, having read all 14 pages of this topic and only just reading the news about Norton St its time to throw my 10p in.

I'm a local from Warrington, and I regularaly have to travel via coach, and my best actually works out to be Megabus trips from Liverpool One. So this for me is usually either an Arriva bus or train from Warrington to Lime St or Queen St (adding this onto the trip still makes it cheaper than NatEx). I've had to get a 5am departure from L1 before, so what I done instead was, along with my case and suit, was travel the evening before and spend some time drinking with some friends in bars, and going to wait for my coach around half 3, no problems whatsoever, shortly before the coach was due a few more people started turning up, all with suitcases and bags so you know they're fellow passengers.

Yes Liverpool One might not be the best for vehicular logistics, but as far as safety concerns raised, I personally find them a bit moot. Also the note of emergency tickets? Now thats clutching at straws on a BIG BIG minority of NatEx users, I mean if you have that much of an emergency at 7pm you'd be lucky if you have a coach to catch, if not you'll find a way to buy, print or display a ticket, the NatEx Office is fine for daytime operation, if you were to ask how many queries they'd get at night it would probably be very very slim. Plus, remember this is a business, the office itself has to be making money, as it costs money to run (staff, electric, equipment etc), so viable hours are fine.

If anyone has noted lately NatEx hasnt been having the best track record (ha thats a pun) in the past few years, so if they can find a cheaper option like using L1 while selling a prime piece of real estate like Norton St to make their balances sheet look better who are we to really argue, at the end of the day they're a plc business and unless anyone here owns stock then go raise these issues at a shareholders meeting.

Phew....