(28 May 2022, 6:08 am)Storx wrote In fairness the only reason no-one discusses SNE is because no-one lives in the operating area on here bar the kid near West Road who hates them.To be fair, I've mentioned their operations plenty of times. Particularly in places like Shields where they've insisted on keeping the network as it's always been and continue to cut costs as far as the depot goes.
They deserve more criticism than they get as they're much worse than Arriva who are the devil advocate on here and GNE. Their Hartlepool network is an absolute shambles on both network and fleet which has Darts in frontline service daily and those awful MAN Darts. They also like cutting things but it's not as noticeable as let's be honest anyone could run a bus service along West Road and Benwell and make a profit since there's low car usage and no alternative at all buts let's got kid ourselves with the likes of the 33, 84 and Q3 which are ex Stagecoach services which they dumped off years ago and the service between the West End and the Metro Centre is absolutely appalling and don't serve shops either. I know someone who lives in Benwell who has to go food shopping at Byker as they can't get to any supermarket closer other than the poor Morrison's at Cowgate (Metro Centre / Kingston Park inaccessible).
Not to mention the god damn awful ALX 300's which are still on frontline service to Ponteland and Kingston Park which are currently being dumped on Stockton which if Arriva or GNE done would be WW3.
Why they insist on feeding the town centre when there must be many other viable (certainly at key parts of the day) parts of the area that don't have operations is beyond me.
But at the same time (despite poor provision cross river in the west end - again something I've brought up in the past as it fits in with my traffic flows/road investment/lack of bus services agenda), they're not telling the world they're #betterthanever, they're not cancelling services due to football matches and they're not weilding the axe as though they're a little kid with a new He-Man toy on Christmas morning.
And to be honest, even if some of the buses are awful, they're better than nowt and may just throw some weight behind the argument that paint jobs and titivations aren't always needed.