(13 Nov 2022, 5:49 pm)Storx wrote What's your obsession with GNE 'exploiting North of Newcastle'. It would be nice for them to run their own services (11/12 (tunnel), 19, 51 (307), 317, 335, 342) without the tax payer having to foot the bill of them all.But what's going to happen if Arriva can't provide a suitable level of service on the 43/44/45? Jesmond's old moneymakers alongside the 306.
Also X-lines utterly sucked. It replaced brands which were easily recognisable with something that was a copy of Stagecoach Gold / Arriva Sapphire 10 years too late (ironic both those are now scrapped). Every X-Lines route has had a service reduction. Blaming Covid is a crap excuse and some of them are quite severe aswell.
X20 - 100%
X84/X85 - 100%
X6/X7 - 50%
X9/X10 - 50%
X30/X31 - 50%
X70/X71 - 50%
X45/X46 - 50% (67% if you include the X47)
X1 - 33%
X21 - No Evenings
'Great' success that.
Compare that to Arriva Northumbria MAX / Sapphire which sucks as it's Arriva:
X21/X22 - No Change Sun - Fri, 33% Saturday
X10/X11 - 33%
306/308 - No Change Sun - Fri, 33% Saturday
X7/X8/X9 - No Change
X20 - No Change
X14 - Service Increase (acknowledge subsidy)
X15 - No Change
X16 - 100%
X18 - No Change
GNE can stay well away from around here for me with it's constant cutting exercises with it's fancy paint jobs to brainwash enthusiasts. If this was Arriva there would be outcry.
Surely another operator who has the resources available would look to exploit the gap.
As for GNE binning off a lot of routes, I agree with you on that especially the North Tyneside locals.
But Arriva's 50 series routes, they're the types of routes that GNE would bin but Arriva have kept going. But are they going to be able to viably keep them going running out of Blyth / Ashington or will they pull the plug with Nexus / NCC picking up the pieces?