(06 Jul 2021, 2:24 pm)GNE6312 wrote That's shocking. GNE should be held accountable for that. If they have enough money to pointlessly repaint & rebrand buses then they have enough to pay staff. Besides stagecoach have no brands and most their buses are bog standard yet they still get passengers. Arriva have a relatively old fleet with few liveries (only MAX, the 2 Sapphire liveries & their 3 corporate liveries) yet they get alot of passengers so they can't say branding brings passengers. Not to mention they could have saved the money to pay staff by not replacing the 15 plate buses on the red kite last year.

Stagecoach will always make money due to the demographic of most of their routes (i.e mainly City Centre).


Martijn's reasoning behind the original pre-pandemic investment and subsequent refreshes (funded by a different budget) make sense. Both will create growth.

Arriva choosing to run deckers in limp mode chasing each other through Cramlington or a tarted up B7TL will only provide a short term gain. In fact, Arriva in Blyth & Ashington will be in serious trouble if they don't improve their offering and adapt to customer expectations before BTR goes live.