How many buses are chartered per week?

YouBuyLocal

Anyone got research on the chartered bus market in Ireland and/or the UK?

schemingbohemia

Very broad question you might want to narrow it down.

Some information here
http://www.cttc.ie/activities/reports.447.html

You can also check bus license activity here
http://www.nationaltransport.ie/bus_licensing.html

There's an excel sheet at the bottom of that page that lists current licenses but that wouldn't cover all chartered services - there would be some one-off event specific licenses.

antoinolachtnai

CTTC are the starting point, though it doesn't have everybody. Licensed services are not chartered services.

There is a fair bit of capacity in the industry if that's what you're wondering.

YouBuyLocal

So if I get 50 people together that want to go from A to B so that they can charter a bus together at a cheaper fair, does that need a specific route license or a Road Passenger Transport Operators License/EC License, or is there some more loose license for a random person with a bus who is aloud to release their bus & driver for chartered services?

Thanks for the links, I'll contact them anyway.

antoinolachtnai

You need the RPTOL if you want to run a transport operation. You don't need this to charter buses.

The legal situation is very complex. You will need your own legal advice in relation to the 2009 Act, which is extremely badly drafted, and the associated guidelines which are a bit better but not much.

My view is that you can legally do what you want to do without a licence but in practice you will need a licence to protect your commercial position. You may run into trouble of your route is adjacent to an existing state subsidised route.

This is a very low margin business and it takes quite a while to build up interest in a new route. You are unlikely to make money on your first run.

Avego, an Irish company has a software product that does some of these sorts of things