(19 Dec 2020, 4:19 pm)ifm001 wrote I'm South Tyneside and the simple answer here is lack of passengers.  No passengers and no competition.  Only really SNE and GNE the main operators here. GNE greatly reduced their services when withdrew from South Shields. We really need a 3rd competing operator to make the other 2 stand up and take notice but sadly the custom is not there. H1 and H2 from Hebburn to South Tyneside Hospital need to be looked at and merged into one service operating longer into the evening (post covid) or merging and introducing a new service altogether

Surely the biggest problem is that there's too much competition and people are using the Metro instead which is much quicker than an alternative bus so there's not much left to go around and sharing the small share between 2 operators there's just nothing there to make money bar the obvious routes (E1, E2, E6, 20, 27, 35, 50) which bridge the gaps in the Metro not to mention that there is a river in between with very very little service crossing it.