(12 Feb 2020, 3:28 pm)Storx wrote Can't argue with that but that could be said mostly about most the North East really. The fact there's one bus that runs to Teesside Park which is the main the shopping area for Teesside pretty much sums up how outdated the network is down in Teesside to me then people wonder why everyone is driving. I don't know the Redcar area enough though to comment on it directly though.

It's a similar story with Silverlink and Team Valley which unless you like walking for miles you can't really get to without driving then the council wonder why they have traffic problems yet still approve extensions and more units at them. (All 3 have had new stuff built in the last couple years).

Totally agree. 
It's as though it's a race to the bottom.
Money not being made from certain routes (or not as much as they would like anyway) and they get axed and fleets get smaller. 

I genuinely wish (and challenge) at least one of the operators to take a punt - creating a service which is different and can make them money, rather than more of the same, just with a different livery and a few bits of tech thrown in. 

I can remember when Nexus did a huge survey a few years back. They visited libraries/community centres and spoke to people about what they wanted.
The sample must have been huge! 
Either way, they identified where people wanted to go and proposed a whole load of new routes as part of the provisional QCS scheme (or at least a forerunner of it). 
I've yet to see any of the operators make use of the mass of qualative or quantative data made available on a big scale (I think the X24 was one of the routes identified by Nexus. Not sure of any others).
It makes me wonder how ambitious these commercial departments really are or if as we see with the rumoured Teesside changes, they're just interested in saving pennies.