(28 May 2022, 5:12 am)Dan wrote Yes, indeed - the 18 and 35 in Newcastle too, and had proposed to do the same in other communities such as the 8 and 18/19 in Sunderland, 30 in South Tyneside, and so on… though the latter changes didn’t come into effect in reality but have presumably been postponed to take place at some point later this year when Government support dries up.
The Stagecoach network is completely different to that of the network Go North East operates, and, as reluctant as I am to do it publicly, it goes back to a point that Andreos1 has made in the past that I do agree with, in that the network has to do something meaningful for customers for everything else to work. Perhaps Stagecoach’s cross-city services which provide not just a link to cities but also their hospitals, schools and nearby towns and suburbs are what more customers want and need.
That said, even Stagecoach has some complete dross which if they are in financial difficulty (albeit to a lesser extent than other operators in the region) then it is understandable why they have looked to withdraw some of these services - and well done to Nexus for maintaining service provision in the areas which would have been impacted by this decision.
Stagecoach understandably receives less criticism because their cuts haven’t been anywhere near as large or as frequent - and perhaps it has something to do with the fact they’ve approached their customer communications differently. I suspect following the changes Go North East and Stagecoach made in March, local authorities insisted on a different and more customer-driven consultation approach this time around, and it will be interesting to see how the rest of the year pans out in relation to further cuts and what communications are made.
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In fairness the only reason no-one discusses SNE is because no-one lives in the operating area on here bar the kid near West Road who hates them.
They deserve more criticism than they get as they're much worse than Arriva who are the devil advocate on here and GNE. Their Hartlepool network is an absolute shambles on both network and fleet which has Darts in frontline service daily and those awful MAN Darts. They also like cutting things but it's not as noticeable as let's be honest anyone could run a bus service along West Road and Benwell and make a profit since there's low car usage and no alternative at all buts let's got kid ourselves with the likes of the 33, 84 and Q3 which are ex Stagecoach services which they dumped off years ago and the service between the West End and the Metro Centre is absolutely appalling and don't serve shops either. I know someone who lives in Benwell who has to go food shopping at Byker as they can't get to any supermarket closer other than the poor Morrison's at Cowgate (Metro Centre / Kingston Park inaccessible).
Not to mention the god damn awful ALX 300's which are still on frontline service to Ponteland and Kingston Park which are currently being dumped on Stockton which if Arriva or GNE done would be WW3.