(10 Oct 2024, 4:55 pm)deanmachine wrote Looks like the whole prospect of taking the buses under public control is just making things worse up here. The silence from local government is deafening at the minute as our services continue to suffer. I'm sure there's going to be photo opportunities when the occasional electric bus shows up though, but not when these leaking streetlites are most of our reality.

Not really surprising though, as far as I'm aware it's only the only GoAhead area up for franchising aswell. Weak area, no future, I'm not being funny I wouldn't be too keen on spending money on it either. I really don't understand why Kim and co are so vocal about franchising when it's literally years away. Everything is just in limbo now and will be for nearly half a decade unless things are sped up.

Obviously it's slightly different for Arriva and Stagecoach because it's one of their stronger areas and they're both going to lose pretty much a fair chunk of their network anyway Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol, Manchester already gone etc. So they might aswell do something up here.

The BSIP payouts from the councils is disturbing though, they need to get some backbone and tender stuff against the commercial work and just say screw you. The X20 being a prime example for it, because I'm not aware of that ever going for tender. Similar with the 21 enhanced frequency, as that easily could've been a 20 minute X12 throughout with Arriva either which would've benefitted more customers but in different areas as the X12 has decent loads South of Durham that they may have just took that opportunity on.