Struggling to understand what the benefit of renumbering the 26 to the 5A would be. The only common sections of route are Shields Interchange to KFC, Chi to Winskills and Valley View to Jarrow Bus Station.

You could use a common brand yes, but there is no way of operating them in an interworking pattern which stays solely within South Tyneside without remote driver changeovers. That creates increased dead mileage and as Washington is the closest depot to Jarrow - you'd have to allow 20mins in each direction per changeover. I doubt many drivers will be happy to sit and take their break in a van in Jarrow Bus Station like they used to years ago. All that would pretty much only be for the purpose of maintaining a single uniform South Tyneside GNE brand.

Current allocation of Corporate livery vehicles on the 9/5 and 50/26 works well enough in my view.

Sent from my SM-G981B using Tapatalk