(25 Apr 2022, 1:33 am)6049 wrote 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.

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Percy Main is the closest depot to Jarrow mind and is only 10 minutes away max, it's barely any different to Deptford to Park Lane really.

I know this isn't the reason people are giving but one argument could be so the 5/26 could be ran by minibuses which is all they need then the Streetlites / Streetdecks could be used on routes that actually need bigger buses especially the 50 so the Deckers aren't being wasted in Jarrow carrying fresh air.

The extra cost of driver changeovers would be offset by the savings in milage of using bigger vehicles when they're really not needed. Plus it would solve the problem of Percy Main having drivers with no routes since they scrapped everything - the Q3 could return to Riverside.