(15 Nov 2015, 2:32 am)Jimmi wrote Although some services are possibly not going to run making a profit, some services could run on a reasonable frequency, for example I think the 7 should run on Boxing Day (not just because it runs where I live), in years gone by I have actually seen a fair few people stood waiting for the bus at Aycliffe Town Centre and this is despite the fact there is no bus service that day, so I feel you could operate that service on a hourly frequency. Then you have services on Tyneside which could easily run and not running these services can in some cases can lose passengers to the competition.
Boxing Day is essentially a Bank Holiday these days and nearly all chain shops in major towns/citys like Darlington, Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland and if you see the staff in many of these shops they will be aged around 18 and many of the people in this age group will be reliant on public transport such as buses, so I am completely puzzled on how some shops actually manage to get any staff to work in these shops on Boxing Day especially in the likes of Darlington where there is no bus service, I can only assume some staff working on that day are one of the following: live close enough that they can walk, have to call a friend/family member to give a lift or pay a small fortune for a taxi.
I was totally shocked the other day seeing adverts from the past about buses running on Christmas Day in a part of the North East whereas we now can't even get a even half decent service on Boxing Day, south of Durham Bus Station there must be no bus service for what must be a ridiculous number of miles.
So sadly once again Arriva will be leaving me stranded on Boxing Day, so once again those of you in Tyne and Wear or live on the GNE 20 & 21 routes be incredibly thankful that you can travel on this day getting your photos of the GNE odd allocations or if you are doing something else like taking advantage of the after Christmas sales or even if you don't use it, it is nice knowing you can use the bus if you want to. Meanwhile once again I will be climbing up the walls being bored mental.
GNE have a pretty well established set of Boxing Day services, whereas Arriva have never done it.
I therefore suspect that Arriva would have much more rejection from drivers and engineering staff internally due to the historic nature of no service on these days, that they wouldn't be able to cover the service provision if they planned to. That lack of definitive heads to cover is probably the main reason why it doesn't happen.
That said, a decent pay rate can tempt pretty much anyone, but you wouldn't open a garage to run just one route (as that initial overhead cost of engineers and supervisors would all be loaded onto that single service along with drivers), you would want to run as much as you can to make it all worthwhile (just like GNE do when they run more routes from one depot for example) - then we come back around to the beginning of this post...
I suspect if it ever happens, it would be in the Northumbria end of the region, given demand already expects a service there. Darlington will never open just to run Service 7. It would be at a loss by lunchtime by the time overheads and background staff are taken into account.