(30 Jan 2023, 2:15 am)Drifter60 wrote I think this is pretty much what is going to happen isn’t it? Or at least the vast majority, there’s clearly (as Dan pointed out in another thread) little regard to route branding. Little Pinks a permanent fixture on the 71 for months, now the X66 will be Green Arrow branded for the foreseeable, Violets and Blondes running around with branding for routes that were withdrawn months ago and have the QuayCity versas been painted yet? Not to mention ‘wrong allocations’ seem to be a bit more common Place than ever before, almost as if Company policy may have been somewhat relaxed.

I think in the future, route branding if it does stay will be reserved for the high frequency core services. The rest will go into standard a fleet standard livery.

There’s been minimal spend on vinyls and paint now since just before Martijn left Go North East - no repaints at all from August to January.

I’d say it’s a little hard to have a strategy which involves route branding when the network and fleet evolves which displaces route branded buses onto other routes and they’re not then repainted.

A route branding strategy only has some merit when it is being accompanied by appropriate marketing for those services. It is the marketing (made easier thanks to services being more identifiable) which generates growth, in my view, not the fact the bus is painted a certain colour. When service delivery nose-dived, GNE turned this particular tap off too (excluding recruitment efforts), so a route branding strategy then immediately does not work.

GNE are now repainting buses again, but seem to be prioritising fleet livery repaints in the first instance - 6967 was the first in the new year, and 5388 (ex Quaycity) was done last week.


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