(14 Oct 2020, 5:36 pm)Dan wrote Agreed.

At the moment there's very little loyalty from passengers on the Coast Road corridor. A lot of them are discretionary users who get on the first bus that turns up, but this is likely because each of the operators have very similarly priced (cheap!) ticketing.

The moment those prices are increased and a divide created, will be when passengers begin to show more loyalty towards the cheaper operator, regardless of when or how frequently they run.

I do think GNE will stand better in the long term. Arriva however have a very big strong hold though between Lynn Road and Station Road including the common section with the 306.

If they were to downsize and reduce both to every 20 minutes including pulling the 306 out of Battle Hill for reliability (already well served by GoNE), they wouldn't be losing out massively as their capacity would be better matched to demand and in practice, passengers on their unique section with no competition would actually get an increased level of service with buses running at an even 10 minute frequency and not 5/15 gaps like now. So in perespective, the levels of service wouldn't be too dissimilar as the 308 bears the brunt of most loads towards Newcastle anyways at the moment with the 306 behind not really picking up.