(27 Dec 2019, 5:43 pm)Andreos1 wrote Even with Newcastle being away yesterday, there's still a couple of thousand needing to get back home after being dropped off by the coaches. 
Absolutely no provision at all made by local operators and taxis raking it in.

Eldest Constanopolus and his mates had to pay almost £25 for a taxi after their trip back from Old Trafford yesterday. 
Assuming they're the only ones on the bus, I can see the combined fares more than covering the drivers wages. 
Add a couple more passengers and there's the fuel covered. 

But we keep getting told 'there's no demand'...
I would argue there's more than enough demand, its like nobody actually tries to determine where the demand is and when. 

Im not saying that there should be a full service everywhere - but if Gateshead can run X1's, using 49 branded Streetlite and on previous Boxing Days we have seen later X10's, then something can surely be done on other corridors. 

Or, if taxis continue to be cheaper for a group of mates or using the car is quicker, easier and cheaper (like it was for me yesterday) - then bus patronage will continue to fall and we will see poorer levels of service. 

I genuinely wish someone would come in at the top at local operators and shake things up a little, so that using the bus is easier and cheaper than currently and that passengers can actually rely on a decent service on Boxing Day and other bank holidays.

"No demand" is a vicious circle, isn't it? I think ANE 22 is a good example of that. Used to be unreliable and infrequent and people didn't trust it enough to use it. Then they made it twice as frequent, put newer vehicles on it and rolled it out properly instead of halfassedly on a sunday and suddenly it became busy quite a lot. Similarly, GNE has grown that Durham-Newcastle corridor on a Sunday and the buses are just as busy, presumably because more people find them an attractive and reliable option (though the Chester-Durham journey breaks down a bit with 3 of the 4 journeys an hour (21, X21, 50) all running within a few minutes of each other.)