It's easy to be critical of Arriva (and I am), but to be fair to them they aren't as terrible as some people think.
But I agree with the previous poster, the different branding doesnt work very well, especially if they dont put their money where their mouth is.
There's no point in having a Sapphire 'premium' brand unless you're going to invest new, good quality buses at least every 4 or 5 years on those routes. If you're going to have years of buying little or no new buses, they will get left behind.
I'm not a fan of Streetlites anyway but at least when they were introduced on the 5's and X3/X4's they were new. Now, the branding is often missing or out of date, seats marked and worn, charging points old fashioned and mostly not working, next stop screens and audio often not working, and the buses themselves often replaced with a Temsa or pulsar.
RE: Arriva North East: Latest News & Discussion - March 2020