Paper Timetables

Storx

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10 Sep 2020, 11:58 pm #14

(10 Sep 2020, 11:18 pm)streetdeckfan I think the thing is I just about trust GNE to keep the standards high, whereas I don't trust Arriva in the slightest.
If Arriva had managed to keep Sapphire a 'premium' service, I think I probably would have criticised GNE for essentially copying.

I think if Arriva had succeeded, we would have seen something similar from GNE much sooner, but it looks like GNE just stood back and watched what did and didn't work with Arriva's approach, and took the best parts to create X-Lines.

Instead of having three tiers ('standard', Sapphire and MAX), GNE made Sapphire the 'standard' and merged Sapphire and MAX to make X-Lines.

The upside of doing that is there's not really much difference spec wise between the 'standard' buses and X-Lines, so if an X-Lines bus is off the road, it can be swapped out with little to no affect on the passenger experience.

Whereas with Arriva, if a Sapphire bus is out of service and is replaced by a 'standard' bus, you lose all the creature comforts like USB ports, Next Stop Announcements, Free WiFi.

Obviously the same still happens from time to time with GNE, but far less than I see with Arriva

To be fair here though it depends which Arriva we're talking about here. It's worked really well up here in Arriva Northumbria and the standards haven't really slipped at all, well, at least at Blyth and Ashington anyway and it's worked really. The Redcar / Stockton services seem to be alright from what I've seen aswell in the main tbf to them aswell. Then there's Durham, Jesmond and Darlington and well...

Either way Stagecoach deserve the credit as Sapphire was a carbon copy of Stagecoach Gold at the time, it's a shame we didn't get any routes up here as it genuinely looks a nice service and nice interior from what I've seen much better than X-Lines, Max and Sapphire. I haven't been on them so could be wrong here but from pictures the coach'esque seating they have look very comfortable much better than the Civic seating at least. The new gold livery is bloody disgusting though and for all I want to attack Best Impression's work Stagecoach's new liveries are in a level of their own.

But I'll get this back on topic as it's not really relevant that and it was about how Best Impressions work is near identical for everything they do and it gives the impression that everyone just copies each other with the same bland 'happy' stock images etc.