(20 May 2022, 11:05 am)balise33 wrote I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts why GNE has downgraded the 35 (now the Prince Bishops 20) over the years?

To me it was a flagship route which stood out against the competition from Stagecoach’s E1 E2 and E6.

I used to commute from South Shields to Sunderland everyday on the 35 and it was every 10 minutes, branded as the cross city Laser for commuters, and was marketed as a “Gold Standard” route using Citaros.

GNE replaced the Citaros with some Wrightbus horrors, ditched the Gold Standard service and then replaced the Laser 35 completely with the Prince Bishops 20. The frequency was decreased to every 15 minutes. 

To me it seems nonsensical. It annoyed me as an existing customer and the downgrades certainly wouldn’t attract new people to use the bus. Is there some logic that is escaping me?

I'm sure there will have been some logic in downgrading it and never being able to make it work since. What that was, I'll never know. Not sure many others will either.

They're now proposing even further changes to the 35.


I appreciate they're at the whims of vehicles, PVR's and balance sheets. But there must have been a better way? Surely?