(28 Feb 2020, 8:02 pm)scanialover wrote Touched a nerve there with my "couple of quid" remark! To be honest I'm all for service rationalisation; little point in running buses just in case the odd individual decides to have a look out and aren't these just the very people who are up on their soapbox when the latest round of service revisions hits the press? Arriva will have crunched the numbers and undoubtedly listened to the requests; I believe that Service 81 did go out to local publicity and obviously it hasn't attracted enough feedback to warrant a change of the plans.

In comparing my day in Newcastle with GNE against a day here in Teesside with Arriva it was just a 'tounge in cheek' comment to be honest and I don't know enough about the operations on Tyneside to say more.

Isn't this what the point of the Teesflex is for communities like these instead of having buses running there for no reason. Obviously the 2 communities complaining here aren't part of it as they're in North Yorkshire but surely it would be better for NYCC to try and get them in the Redcar and Cleveland zone if possible rather than having Arriva without subsidy running them.

To be fair I think it depends on the depot as each of them have there good areas and some not so good.

GNE: Good (Gateshead, Consett, Chester Le Street, Hexham), Average (Washington, Sunderland (Just)), Not so good (North Tyneside)
Arriva: Good (SE Northumberland), Average (Jesmond, Darlington, Durham (Just)) - can't comment on other areas but Redcar sounds poor with Temsas on long distance routes etc.
Stagecoach: Good (Newcastle), Average (Sunderland, South Shields) - can't comment on other areas.

I must say I've used the X12 a few times and the state of some of the buses (I believe Durham) are shockingly bad. Getting off a Blyth Gemini and then onto a X12 one (when they had them) it felt they were two different buses - just damn right dirty and tatty in general. I believe the X12 one was a 61 plate and the Blyth one 59 so was actually newer aswell.