(11 Nov 2023, 10:02 pm)mb134 wrote It's much like the rest of the Aberdeen operation in that sense, absolutely nothing to shout about. 

I've seen comments from people saying that they'd like First to take over from Arriva (admittedly pre- I Squared purchase), and there'll no doubt be some people wanting them to take over from GNE. Put it this way, if First were to take over from GNE they'd have Streetlites operating the 21 and then cut the frequency to half hourly. They, especially from my experiences of them in Scotland, have absolutely no ability to plan for the future, and seem to make changes with the intent of them failing (with the next set of service changes cutting the service completely).

Yeah agreed, First are awful. They're not called worst group for no reason. Mind there's been improvements in recent years as 10 year ago or so they were in a really really bad place not that there's much bar for that.

Definitely agreed, wouldn't want them anywhere near the North East though, their Stoke operations are pretty awful aswell especially for a poor town which generally means high levels of bus usage. Mind not that Arriva can take a rosette for it either as they've just pulled out of Crewe completely.

Mind GNE have gone there before with the Omnicities in the mid-late 00's, one of the most bonkers decisions to then replace them with ex London stock. Very bizarre how they treat the 21 so badly considering it's probably their flagship route around that period.

The Pulsars at Ashington and Blyth for the 308/X30's was pretty shortsighted in 2009 aswell, which had similar problems.