Mr. Tim Gaston:

It is not that there would be a given distance between bus stops because it depends on where people are living and where they want to board. There is not a hard and fast rule about what the distance between bus stops should be. We would prefer to see the network of bus poles in place and the regular services only using those official bus poles. Clearly, that would be a better place to be. As we have said a few times, we are playing catch-up in getting bus poles in place which does leave it, to some extent, to the discretion of drivers if they want to stop somewhere to allow a passenger to board or alight. Custom and practice have generally established where those are around the country. We know that to be the case. We would like to get as quickly as we can to where we have a network of official bus stops for the regular scheduled services.

Regarding the demand responsive transport or app-based DRT, we would like to be able to have a network of what we would call virtual bus stops, which will not be bus poles because that could be almost every crossroads and there will need to be guidance to the operators as to where it is safe to stop. We will need to make sure that we are within the bounds of the legislation. That is one of the strands of activity in the programme, to make sure that we are within the appropriate legislation as to how we are going operate the services.