(16 Dec 2016, 1:30 pm)Greg in Weardale wrote But the 9 is an illogical and badly conceived timetable with only one through service per hour making it less useful than it was and will therefore put off passengers. Service changes like this over the last few years have put GNE into a spiral of decline which is shown by the poor corporate financial results.

Whatever has been said isn't representative of all divisions, nor does it have to be. Derwentside and it's interconnecting links to itself and nearby cities is a complete monopoly. The amount of fares over 3£ paid is ludicrous. On evenings, on a 6 from say newcastle to stanley and everywhere else in the world, you can expect numbers of about 60 passengers. There are very few concessions around at this time. Most of these people have week tickets (or netone) (around 40£), or three zone buzzfare which is 100£ a month, or single paying (3£) quite a few the full fare (4£90). The fact that the road network is awful makes taking the bus more appropriate for most from this area. There are traffic jams everywhere, most of which the 6 avoids, too.

The buses used on route 6 are buses which just about function. Passengers always complain about them to the drivers. It's not a good experience, but it doesn't have to be. There is no need for comfort, because these people will always take the bus - no matter how uncomfortable and or expensive their trip is.

I have no idea how numbers are elsewhere, but you have to consider both aspects. Passenger loss isn't just down to fequency and quality of the service, especially where there is literally no competition. There are also social impacts, to consider. I spent many long and hard hours studying population shifts, I refuse to go back to explaining it, but the important thing to note is that people can make statistics mean anything they wish to, without considering alternative perspectives. In essence, people go out of their way to draw conclusions about results and make them represent something.

For this reason, I'm not prepared to blame the loss on anything until there is a direct cause, released publically - with actual data to support - which isn't skewed to mean something.

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