(29 Oct 2023, 6:43 pm)mb134 wrote 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.
Aren't the £2 fares topped with extra cash from the government though so I'm assuming they'll be getting more than £2 per each single. It would be complete suicide if they didn't for the longer distance journeys.
But even at 9.5k (should be less though) seems a lot but at the end of the day they have 175,000 journeys a day - according to https://www.gonortheast.co.uk/about-go-north-east so it's still around that 5% mark.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see a 10% reduction over the long term because of the number of cancellations and now strikes, long term it could end being an expensive mistake especially now because Nexus and the local councils aren't exactly going to be in best terms losing contract work especially in relation with schools. Having buses actually running would no doubt go a long way towards that number, as I know I wouldn't be using GNE buses if I needed in certain areas as it's just unusable.
Arriva and SNE is strange though, not sure to be honest. I've heard that some routes down Darlington and Stockton with both are doing really well aswell and the likes of South Shields and Hartlepool which generally have been a bit of a mess for years with low cost units and stuff have barely had any cuts at all and whenever I see the buses the loads look good enough tbh. Apart from some routes in the rural areas of Durham there hasn't really been any cuts between either of them bar some arguably sensible frequency reductions.
GoNorthEast have really messed up and tbh I put it down to jumping the gun and reducing services really early. When there's a pandemic, people probably actually respected the buses being quiet rather than being stuffed in like cattle and the buses have grown naturally with people gaining confidence in going out again whereas GNE people who used them all the time got scared and moved elsewhere and haven't returned and in turn their bus has now disappeared so now have no choice regardless. Not to mention having massive network changes so when people gained confidence their bus disappeared and just stuck with whatever they were doing during Covid.