Future of the ‘Big Three’
Future of the ‘Big Three’
Stagecoach. While Newcastle and Sunderland maybe doing ( or the busways side of things ) the Hartlepool and Stockton side ( Transit side of things) seem to be getting nothing. Have heard from various people that the recent investment at Stockton in 2019 of the Enviro 200 MMC are been swapped with older Man’s from Newcastle while Hartlepool fleet is mostly falling to bits. So while on paper Stagecoach might be doing well with the merger with National Express they clearly don’t have any budget to buy new buses resulting in Stockton and Especially Hartlepool having fleets with the majority of buses been 16 - 18 years old. So clearly they is something not right.
Arriva. Owners don’t care and clearly don’t want to invest. They more bothered about trying to get rid completely and want as much as possible for it by selling the lot in one go instead of the more sensible approach of selling bits off separately.
Go North east. While they do invest they doing it to paper over the cracks it seems. Constantly changing services it seems constant repaints and pointless rebrands and completely giving up on the south of the region with only the X10 covering the south of the region now. Darlington and Hartlepool completely forgotten about and buses on certain services getting upgrades then downgraded within a year it does seem they don’t have much of a clue with what they doing. Despite the opportunity to expand in the south of region and link up with East Yorkshire they seemingly have decided against that.
So all 3 companies seem to not really know what they doing and at the moment it seems nothing will really change this year if anything things might get worse and not better. Hopefully I be proved wrong though.
