(06 Jan 2020, 7:56 pm)Storx This is a problem with ticketing though blame the councils not the operators. If you have proper multi operator tickets you fix all the problems you explain there. All you'll end up with if you do what you want is 20 buses going along West Road competing against each other but the likes of the 6, 7 and 8 will be scrapped / run down to the ground as they'll be more focused on petty games. You just have to look at North Tyneside for that, you have 14 newish buses an hour running along the Coast Road - mostly carrying fresh air. Yet everything else is just second hat, there's no NSA's / USB's / WiFi etc. on any other service in the area. The 19 and Little Coasters arguably have some of the worst buses in the GNE fleet now. Similar with 57 (Arriva) with the battered darts. Competition won't improve things for the non core bus routes if anything it'll make them worse.
If you want people using buses the focus should be on being on time, good connectivity, easy to change between operators without hassle, ability to use bus, metro and rail on single tickets, regional smart cards / contactless with capping (like Oyster). Not who's the cheapest and has best customer service. The operator of the bus should be irrelevant.
As Tyne & Wear has the Network 1 Day Rover, there are no ticketing issues, passengers can travel on all buses and the Metro, both multi-operator and multi-modal. This needs to be extended to Northumberland, County Durham and Teesside, but just multi-operator, not multi-modal is there is no Metro service available!
The West Road needs fewer buses, and that means fewer Stagecoach buses, as GNE only have the X84/X85 and likewise Arriva only has the 685. Stagecoach has 7 bus services passing through Denton Burn! I would scrap the 6, 7 and 8 anyway, they are unreliable and serve no really purpose. I would also curtail the 32/32A to Benwell. We certainly don't want large numbers of buses carrying fresh air! The Little Coasters had new buses, as indiGo North Tyne, GNE rather stupidly put older buses on Little Coasters, no idea why! The operators should not and moreover should not have any need to compete via petty games, if they are reliable they will succeed! GNE could wipe the floor with Stagecoach in the West End if they introduced new services, which Stagecoach never does. Admittedly Stagecoach is on the up with features like WiFi and NSAs, but reliability is sorely lacking, especially on the expresses. Competition forces bus operators to ensure buses run on time, reliably (not breaking down!) and with all the features passengers want (even if that is just a comfortable seat, or a clean, tidy bus). GNE actually does very well in their own territories, without any competition, likewise Stagecoach can do well even without any competition, but sometimes they just don't bother, as they don't have to! Arriva gave up on their bus network a long time ago, they should be sold and improved!
