(29 Oct 2023, 5:53 pm)Storx wrote The companies revenue from fares is £65m though in 2022. These strikes are going to lose customers long term as much as 5% easily which is this £3m. I get the argument that giving more money when making a loss is stupid, which of course it is, but the constant strikes and service cancellations, buses are never going to recover.

Obviously I don't have the financial stats it but if these cancellations keep going, people will continue to avoid buses and long term it will be more damaging and no btw I don't agree with the £15+ that is stupid but I have heard on another forum that the union proposed a deal for £14.81 which would've ended all this which GNE rejected.

I know Ben Maxfield get's a lot of criticism and he probably deserves it but this imo all stems back to utterly crazy idea under the past management to slash fares across the board. Absolutely ridiculous decision which backfired big time especially considering Arriva and Stagecoach have both recovered to similar levels, and arguably better in some areas like Ashington but didn't intentionally decide to slash it's fares.

Yes, but the operating costs were £89.7m, leaving them with an operating loss of £1.9m (not the inflated figure they're quoting). Their operating costs have actually decreased by about £7m, compared to their 2019 accounts, but the real issue is they're down about £7.5m on contract (or 'other') revenue and close to £17m on passenger revenue. 

As I posted elsewhere earlier, it seems that the first thought is still cut, rather than grow. It's never going to work in the long-term; you're simply re-arranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship. 

Maxfield gets a lot of criticism, and rightly so. At a time the business clearly needs leadership, they've ended up with a glove puppet for NF. It's absolutely ludicrous that they expect their workforce to pay the price for failure at the top.