(28 May 2021, 12:12 pm)mb134 wrote Realistically though, there's only so many night services that can be justified. It's not like in London and Edinburgh for example, where the night buses are mainly inner city routes, the GNE night buses are a different kettle of fish - particularly the ones you're suggesting. 

Demand for 5 of the 7 days per week on all of the services GNE are doing is probably minimal at best (reliant on shift workers who don't drive, I'd imagine), hoping for a boost on the weekends. Further increasing operational costs on further routes which don't even serve a large city, is only likely to make the whole nightbus operation cease again. You'd have to fork out for additional drivers (who will probably be on an enhanced rate given the hours), extra fuel, extra associated maintenance costs, potentially costs to keep an extra depot open overnight or costs for route learning. Couple all of that with the fact that GNE aren't even charging a premium fare (as they did previously, and as many other operators do) for those services, margins will be slim to begin with regardless.

Let's be real, they'd be better off not running the night services during the week at all. Like you say, margins will be slim.

So, to me you either go all in, and make it a cohesive network so people are actually able to use the services at night, or you don't bother at all.

The thing they've done this time to try and make it more attractive is making the fares palatable for most passengers, but the issue still remains that unless you live and are travelling to a place directly on one of the routes, you're screwed.

Even running a very limited service on some of the other key routes, such as the X-Lines network, or the 49, 27 etc. would make it so the night buses aren't only of for the people living in city centres!