(25 Jan 2021, 10:35 am)Dan wrote ...which is largely what the strategy is, but sadly the perception seems to be that it's either black or white and no in between!It's about how obvious this strategy is, yes us enthusiast may notice it's all meant to be colour coded but the average person won't. Looking at Sunderland, many of the services are already red, but the buses that stand out are the different coloured ones; the Purple, Orange & Blue ones. I've seen plenty a time when people refer to the 20 as "the purple bus". Are you going to slap a bit of red at the back of some of those? I'd hope not. The colour combination would be horrible.
There may be a subtle nod to one of the colours on cross-boundary services; such as how Cityrider and Crusader includes red at the rear, Cobalt & Coast includes blue at the rear, and Connections4 includes pink at the front, but it's not the be all and end all, 'farce' and 'flawed strategy' that it's being made out to be, due to a very small reference included within an internal team briefing.
This is also completely different to the corporate identity that was talked about for a long time with the Roadstripes making it clear what a GNE bus was - yet the Q3 has received a special swoop even though it's just an ordinary bus route with ordinary buses that coincidentally go to a new housing area (despite how much you try to make it special). It just doesn't look like a GNE bus unless they spot the little GNE logo on the side. X lines is fine, you've still got the roadstripes (just in the opposite direction) and VOLTRA I can make an exception as a "special electric bus".
EDIT: I've just seen Andreos1's post, which is very similar to what I've said!"