(26 Nov 2020, 11:04 pm)IRHardy wrote Come and look at London and see how brilliant services run by politicians are.
At least you still have printed timetables in the North East, TfL stopped doing those years ago, if you don’t have access to the web, you are buggered.
First, we had the bendy buses (Ken Livingstone introduced those).
Then Boris got rid of them because he was a cyclist and one cut him up, so then we got the Boris Bus. Also, we have all these cycle superhighways which have reduced traffic speeds in central London so that it is quicker to walk.
Now we have Sadiq Khan who decided to have a 5-year fares freeze even though he knew that the Government grant to TfL was being removed. Service frequencies have been reduced and routes shortened because bus usage is going down as a result of the slowing down of traffic speeds.
And no, we don’t have any public transport on Christmas Day either, but we do have a normal Sunday service on Boxing Day & New Year’s Day.

Sounds like you described the North East there to be fair.
- Timetables most people don't care about really but the bus stop information as of late is horribly out of date up here.
- The same bendy buses which because London didn't want them ended up here on the 58 and had the same awkward problems they had down there.
- The Borisbus was stupid tbf, but they were popular and it's lead to the Enviro City and the new Wright bus aswell.
- Tyne Bridge down to one lane, Askew Road shut, numerous local bridges shut - all for cycles.
- Buses have been cut here for years, including some with Arriva in the next weeks, half of Stagecoach routes are still in Covid timetables and GNE couldn't cut more if they tried and we've had price increases above inflation to add salt in our wounds.
- Also with TFL they have an excellent Tube / Train service, integrated tickets so you can use that slow bus to nearest tube and get somewhere quick, much newer fleets which have a lot of requirements for USB etc coming in, next stop information for over a decade now (we've still barely got it), contactless for years now (we've just got it).

There's definitely issues down there like a large black hole where it's unsustainable and it making stupid losses every year but it's much better than up here tbh.