(05 Nov 2020, 1:00 am)streetdeckfan wrote The issue is it's basically impossible to have 'full competition'. If every operator operated in every area, there wouldn't be enough passengers to go around.
I also think having buses being nationalised is a horrific idea. All it does is give the monopoly to the government rather than a private company. Then it'll go from it being all about profit, to it costing as little as possible to run. At least when you're doing it for profit, there's an incentive to improve the service. When you're running something as a 'public service', it just has to fulfil the bare minimum of being able to move people around, anything beyond that is a waste.
Just look how much nicer the buses are up here compared to likes of London!
I live in Bishop, so it's mainly Arriva with GNE just running the X21, and I honestly don't have an issue with that. My main issue with the public transport here is the lack of multi-operator tickets, compared to T&W (which could be argued is down to the lack of competition), but there's also the fact that there is such a hard border between the 'territories'.
For example If I want to travel from Bear Park to Langley Park, a distance of about 3 miles, I'd have to buy both an Arriva and GNE ticket, or a Network One Explorer at £10.90 for the day, but have to go via Durham so the journey would take an hour instead of the 7 minutes in the car
But in Tyne and Wear, you can travel from Seaton Burn to Easington Lane, a distance of around 24 miles, using both GNE and Arriva for only £7.80 using a Network One Day Rover ticket.
If I could get a reasonably priced ticket to use on both GNE and Arriva down here, I'd be all over it. It'd mean I wouldn't have to plan things to make sure that when I get an Arriva ticket, I'm visiting all the places that are Arriva only in that one day.
You need to look into bus companies ran by governments more than that. Dublin Bus and Lothian are 2 companies you should be comparing to not London Buses which is franchised which is something different again. I'd rather than money went back into the governments hands than some big wig in an office somewhere. Technically one of the 3 bus companies is the North East is ran by the government anyway just the shame it's the German one and not ours. You don't have to have it ran by the government directly as a public service. LNER and Northern Trains are an example of public ran transport and they're both better than the private companies than ran it before there which surprisingly are 2 of the big 4 in the UK not to mention the bombshell with Thameslink Southern (GoAhead). To be fair though so is the Metro with Nexus so it all comes down who's running the show in a similar sense with private companies.
To be fair though I can't imagine there being much difference for the passenger who runs it with the same problems, we may have a few more evening and Sunday services though but that'll be about it and again it comes to runs it, if it's someone like Lothian then it could be good. If it's Nexus then I'm sure GCT will run the 21 and 308 well...