(07 Aug 2014, 9:01 pm)Robert wrote To be honest, i dont think Arriva should have even came in with competition for the service. GNE just wanted to revive the whole 'OK' travel name back to Bishop Auckland - which arriva wouldnt have done i must say and have a bus service that arriva didnt operate. In the OK1s case, it was just Arriva's greed that killed the OK1 by timing it so, as has already been said, passengers would get on the first bus that came to them. Arriva have plenty of services around that area and could easily manage without the X1 and just let GNE get on with the OK1 just like they have with service 18. It all comes down to that saying 'would you like it if somebody did that to you' and in arriva's case the answer would be no because they would be losing out on money for the sake of a few minutes.
At least the OK1 struck some fear for Arriva to improve their services in Bishop Auckland, after the OK1 was launched the X1 was introduced which offered faster journey times than the 1/1b and sometime afterwards the 6 was changed to run to run to West Auckland on a 12 minute frequency.
Yes passengers would just get on the first bus that turned up, the other issue was Arriva had more services in Bishop Auckland and Darlington which were more frequent and GNE had no other services in Darlington and little other services in Bishop Auckland.