(30 Jun 2013, 10:14 pm)CatsFast101 wrote Are explorer tickets accepted on scarlet band services? And tbh as controversial as this may seem I think small bus operators are the past, people now travel further afield more often than in the past, so I think now if I had the option of a scarlet band/small local operator service though my town or a GNE/Arriva bus I think I'd know which one I'd choose due to the more range of it tickets options and options of traveling further afield.
What about when the independents have all been bought out or ran into the ground by the bigger boys and a council contract becomes available? As a taxpayer, would you want GNE or Arriva to have the council over a barrel and tender unreasonable prices - or would you want an independent operator, giving a realistic tender, based on lower overheads and margins?
The whole point of de-regulation was to increase competition (we all know it has failed), so these smaller operators are the only thing stopping the big three in the North East having us over a barrel with our pants down (they already have us over the barrel, they just havent got to our pants yet...)