@Towanda Buses used to have something resembling a national plan (there was at least co-operation between operators where routes overlapped) but Thatcher deregulated them. Companies competed for the lucrative routes andweren't interested in the ones that didn't make a profit.
Because bus companies couldn't use the profit from lucrative routes to subsidise the non-profitable ones, the latter got cut, unless local councils chose to subsidise them and now that council funding has been cut so much, councils often withdraw or reduce the subsidy to make savings.
Our local service used to be half-hourly buses from 6.50 in the morning until 7.10 in the evening. Now they're hourly, don't start till 7.40 and the last bus back from town is at about 5.40pm. All the commuters now drive (and pay £6 a day to park) or get driven to the station and picked up again in the evening, because the buses start too late and finish too early for the busiest trains. Between 7 & 8 in the morning, the station pick up are is chaos.
Bus passes will be irrelevant in rural areas soon, because the service will be so infrequent that they'll be next to useless.