(26 Mar 2023, 10:13 pm)Storx wrote There's a big difference between branding everything at Sunderland as one brand as it's own operating area and having nonsense like Berries and Gold etc.

Having something like Sunderland and District for all the local buses there wouldn't be the end of the world but they'd be one standard livery so they work on anything and since they use the same corporate background it's as simple as removing some words and putting something else on if it moved depots.

GoNorthEast is tarnished and it's a bit of a crap name (Northern was always better imo which keeps creeping back now and then).

At the same time though I’m not sure having one huge Sunderland district brand would work either. If we go to what was included at first that’s the 2/2A, 61, 55, 33, 38, 39 it was just a lump of routes with no synergy really. Some common corridors but in the main all separate routes and serving different areas and purposes. The latter three I’d say are all across town or into-city Centre services whereby the first three are more longer distance routes really; the 61/55 in particularly aren’t really local routes in Sunderland, they only exist/existed to get communities at their southern terminus and along the way into Sunderland. So I don’t know if one big brand covering lots of different services really does anything more than just simply ‘Go North East’ does?

What I would say is that I think the mini bus networks have worked slightly more effectively as at least it meant that those buses were identified as the ‘local buses’ the ones serving estates etc. In East Durham, I think everyone knew the little pink buses (indigo) were the ones taking your around the local area, the 202, 208, 209 etc. Whereas the other bigger buses such as the 60/55 were going out of town. I’d argue even that policy has lost its way at times though, when things like the 265 got included and now the X6 as a Peterlee purples solo. Perhaps the 33/38/39 may have worked in a similar concept as a common brand for inner Sunderland Town services?

As for ‘Northern’, I was in my late teens when GNE just started slapping ‘Northern’ on the side of all the spare red buses so that name just reminds me and a few people my age of rattling old SPDs and various other older spare vehicles. So I’m not sure that name is great either now!