(15 Nov 2013, 6:20 pm)Liam wrote I would imagine some work has gone into analysing the risk of operating services and the potential gains which can be made on the day. If the company don't see potential in certain routes on the day, they won't operate.
Last year, the 1 operated between North Shields and Whitley Bay with Nexus funding. If the route was to operate at a standard where it could be taken on commercially, Go North East would potentially operate the route commercially. They aren't operating it commercially this year, which suggests it didn't run to a minimal operational level last year.
I assume that the Coast Road does require that volume of vehicles per hour, as Nexus also provided funding for Arriva's 306 and 308 on Boxing day 2011. There obviously must be demand for services on the Coast Road for Nexus to implement additional services running alongside Go North East's own 309/310.
If 52,000 more people are heading into Newcastle for the first time on Boxing Day for however many years, (apart from the park n ride) why are services similar to previous years?
Sunderland will be a ghost town and the 40 odd thousand + people who have gone there in the past, will be somewhere else...
Surely it would have made sense to add extra services into Newcastle/Metrocentre (shopping traffic and football traffic isn't a good mix) - rather than have buses duplicating each other along Ryhope Road and at Herrington Burn?
I agree with what you are saying about the analysing of services to identify risk - but this is GNE remember.
Consolidating services in areas they have seen a reasonable patronage in the past, isn't going to help anyone stuck on the Western Bypass.