I agree with everything except the "pointless". It's a long term and well-thought-out attempt by marketers to change the public's expectations of their relatio

I agree with everything except the "pointless". It's a long term and well-thought-out attempt by marketers to change the public's expectations of their relationship with public transport. This started twenty years ago with privatisation of the railways: probably the new private train operators felt a change in terminology was required to make people accept they were no longer dealing with a state-owned network and that the balance of power had shifted towards private enterprise. Basically an attempt at using linguistics to reprogram a large population. But it hasn't worked: people are very conscious of new words being forced upon them and the result is that it makes the industry look sleazy.