(16 Feb 2023, 10:15 pm)Drifter60 wrote The other thing is with secured or tendered bus routes, Joe Public don’t have any idea that certain services are only existing because of Council funding. Particularly outside of Nexus TW area. In Durham things like 71, 25, 28/29 are DCC contracts but they operate just like any other commercially ran GNE bus. Really it should be clear where private bus operators are wholly operating services on behalf of Councils/transport executive and also which are part subsidised and the purpose of the subsidy too.

See personally I'd prefer the opposite where a bus is a bus, there's one ticket and you can use it on any bus and they're all branded the same. Whether it's Stagecoach, GoNorthEast, Arriva, GCT etc is irrelevant really and complicates things and is one of the massive benefits of London.

Imo the operators would actually benefit long term if they did it aswell as they've carved their own areas up so it's not like 95% of people have any choice who to use anyway and in the places they do it's just a more frequent service like the Coast Road changes.

It's not like someone really cares it's GNE or Arriva in the real world. It would make the council services more popular imo as most of them just don't exist online and if they do they're ran by weird operators without any ticket validity.