(09 Oct 2022, 9:48 am)L469 YVK wrote But on a serious note, given depot rationalisation with both GNE & Arriva, would they not have been better off agreeing this with TUPE nailed down?

Effectively excluding any small route deals as above, Arriva would move their Jesmond routes to Percy Main and GNE would their Percy Main routes to Riverside. Would be a win win as Arriva would've still been able to sustain a feasible operation in North Tyneside without the pitfalls of Blyth / Ashington, and GNE would be able to rationalise their depot estates.

Plus Arriva eventually no doubt would've been able to draw up a deal with the developers building houses around Norham Road meaning potentially a replacement depot down the line.

Think the entire point of closing Jesmond without direct replacement is to cut overheads, taking on Percy Main would completely defeat the point of that. Obviously there were initial plans to move to a new site, you assume massively rising costs (building work, fuel, wages, parts, etc.) are at least part of the reason why this is no longer going ahead. 

Remains to be seen what will happen to the 685, but realistically most other conventional Jesmond routes can be operated by Ashington/Blyth without massive increases to dead mileage. For the 43 and 52 for example, there will be significant reductions in dead mileage for the boards starting/finishing at Ashington & Morpeth - and no real change on the Cramlington ones. It'll really only be the minibus routes which see significant increases in dead mileage. 

I don't imagine GNE would be keen on smacking even more work into Riverside immediately after having to take on the CLS routes either.