(21 Nov 2019, 10:52 pm)Storx wrote I still have to disagree. Even in that case, unless your at the bus stop 10 minutes early by the time you get realise you need to get a different bus and get on the bus. The original bus you we're meant to get will have gone from Gateshead anyway so your just waiting there for the 15 minutes or whatever instead. You might aswell wait around and be pissed off but save the bother.

As much as Arriva get things wrong I think swapping drivers and having breaks so they can regulate the buses and swap things around to keep things on time at terminus' is one of their better things. Simple fix, ditch sub branding where they know they do it especially at Jesmond with Sapphire, Max, and the Green buses all doing 3 bus routes they know they switch around. Similar at Blyth with the X7 - X11 and 308 and have one brand for the lot.

One thing I would say would be better regulation of buses. The amount of times you see 1, 2 or even 3 buses of the same bus route following each around rather than turning one back and/or running one out of service only dropping people off or telling them to get on the bus behind to get them back ontime. Stagecoach is by far the worst for this on the 1 and 62/63 in particular but you see it quite often on the 21, 56 and X1 aswell.

I know what you mean, but at least you're waiting inside at an interchange rather than in the rain.

I'm not disagreeing that they should ditch sub branding, I think they should get rid of Sapphire and Max completely, since they're exactly the same thing. Unless you're doing proper route branding like GNE does, I see no point at all. Especially when the Sapphire brand was introduced as a more 'premium' experience, but soon turned into the regular bad experience that Arriva is known for

Like I said, I think the reason why GNE can get away with having each route branded is purely down to the routes they operate, a lot of the branded services are very frequent so it's not much of a delay if one is cancelled (The 49/49A - every 10 minutes, or Angel 21 - up to every 7 minutes), or run through major towns where it's easy to change buses if they terminate early (Tyne Valley Ten, Red Kite X45/X46/X47).

I have been on many an X21 where we've changed buses at Chester le Street (I think mostly because they're just using the X21 to get buses back to CLS as it's the fastest service)