People can always be critical or suggest different routes, but at least the local councillors have fought to try to improve things.

As for the suggestions of working with Arriva to change current routes - well, it would require more than one service to be changed, and you begin adding to already lengthy journey times which puts off more passengers.

IMO, Arriva have consolidated their services gradually over the years, to the extent of often trying to serve too many places per route. Take a town like Redcar for example, which was perfect for a 'town' service. Something like Dormanstown - Redcar - Redcar East - Marske Estate or New Marske. They used to have a local service, but got rid and diverted longer routes. The X3/X4 have to go via Dormanstown, the 62 goes all over the place. Almost everything has to go to Middlesbrough.

If they don't want to commercially operate local services going round the villages, their current network is about as good as it can get in terms of where they can reasonably serve without journey times and 'going round the houses' becoming ridiculous.