Sir, Since my previous words there have been some interesting developments. I have discovered that after paying the £12.10 return fare from Innerleithen to Waterloo Place once you arrive at Penicuik the fare suddenly becomes £1.50 single which is exactly matching the Lothian Region bus service fares!

By my very rough calculations this equates to the Penicuik service costing some 0.15 pence per mile whilst from Innerleithen the charge is very much higher at approximately 4.79 pence per mile! Using their Penicuik to Edinburgh scale it would mean that our Innerleithen to Edinburgh return journey should cost £8.70 which is a great improvement. Sadly, it is a very long time since the fare was exactly that! We are obviously subsidising the company in their competition with LRT and I find that shocking.

I realise now that we have lost the use of the Bus Station in Edinburgh because the increase to 20 minute intervals would be too much for the limited spaces available there. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Borders passengers don’t matter to First so long as they can compete with the LRT service and by paying the higher scale of fares they use us all in their fight.

Finally, with now having had longer to be able to see the effects of the increase to the new service I feel that with more of these buses on the road from Galashiels to Edinburgh there is a distinct risk of an increase in accidents. Often there are two of these buses quite closely spaced on the road due to the effects of the buses being perhaps earlier or later on their route. I have seen long lines of traffic following each with no opportunity to overtake. But as we all know there is always one who does not make the necessary calculation as to when it is safe to pull out and goes ahead affecting everyone else in the process. I hope I am wrong but I feel that there are accidents just waiting to happen.

This increase to a very unnecessary bus every 20 minutes has probably made the roads more dangerous for us all. I am, etc.

(Name and address supplied)