I doubt that many people outside of current passengers/those with an interest engaged with Big Bus or Transport Focus. Some odditities that jumped out are journey times. Hebburn to Newcastle Central Station is listed as 51 minutes and the Metro as 22 mins whereas Hebburn to Central is 15 minutes (and should speed up slightly with MetroFlow)
I don't think the whole thing addresses the number one issue with Buses (outside of cost and convenience)....it's the beloved passenger
Other questions I have:
Realistically in a time of cuts and pulling back the covid deficit- who is funding all of the free kids travel?
How many DRT schemes do we need to run as a country before we realise they don't actually work?
They can go on with all these pipe dreams and super routes or they could just introduce capped regionwide ticketing to support the Customers they currently have.
There are shades of Project Orpheus here