(10 Apr 2020, 9:58 pm)Storx wrote It appears Arriva and Stagecoach are thinking more about people and having buses which are bigger so people can spread out more rather than GNE who is purely thinking from a cost view. I don't really understand why neither since the government has commited to paying for any losses occured since recommending not to travel anyway but I'm sure there's a reason behind the scenes.

What you have to bare in mind is that when GNE mothballed two thirds of their fleet, there was no government package for bus operators, so they had to act purely based on the cost.
They aren't going to start re-registering less efficient, more costly vehicles to run on routes where you're lucky to get a few passengers anyway.

Routes that have higher passenger numbers are getting the deckers and routes that don't need them, even if they're normally allocated them, are not.
Take the X9/X10 for example, not a lot of people are going to be travelling between Newcastle and Middlesbrough, so it makes sense to run the E200s that aren't being used on the 97 there instead, those B5s can then replace the less efficient B9s on the 10, and those B9s can then be de-registered to recover some of the money from the tax.

Running a bigger bus for the sake of social distancing make sense, but only if the smaller buses aren't big enough. And with bus usage being down 90%, it's fair to say that most services could probably run with a Solo with little issue