(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.

To get that extra £3m per year though, they'd have to grow revenue by over £8000 per day. Lets assume all passengers are paying by £2 singles - that's an extra 4000 journeys per day needed to claw back that £3m. 

That's on top of the £4m that has been stated above to cover the pay rise which has been offered. Combined, GNE would need to increase revenue by over £19000 per day to fully cover the pay rise. That's 4750 new customers that need to make 2 trips by bus, every single day.

In terms of your point on Arriva and Stagecoach, I wonder if that is more due to them having reasonably stable networks, especially in Northumberland and Newcastle? Those networks (bar the 51-55) are now slowly starting to expand again, albeit largely due to BSIP funding. 

(29 Oct 2023, 6:09 pm)Adrian wrote 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.

I struggle to see how they grow the business in it's current state, especially given the amount required to pay for these pay increases. There seems to be no investment currently from the new owners, just more second hand vehicles which themselves will need replacing sooner rather than later.

I think the expansion into North Tyneside was probably a decent attempt, but even if they were making a bit of money to start with I can't see those routes surviving this strike - passengers will have gone to Stagecoach, or will have arranged car shares as you've pointed out in another thread.