(22 Apr 2023, 6:21 pm)Lollist wrote Maybe they should do a route make-over like they did with scunthorpe. Fix all the route number so it just goes 1,2,3,4,5 etc and rework them and make them more profitable. but it is a private bus company so i doubt anything like that would happenIf you mean Hartlepool that is what’s happening but reworking and renumbering the 6 and 7 both long standing routes which predate the Stagecoach network with very little in re routing won’t be a good idea. At the moment they is only 5 commercial services they operate the 1 3/3A 6 and 7. That’s along side one college service the UTC with one split journey each way and two early morning work services the 20 and 980 which is about one journey a day only going one way. So it is a simple network and the existing services up to a point do work. The problem really is that they really needs to be additional services. To go back 20 years to 2003 you had a lot more services either the following
1,1A,2,2A, 3, 3A,4,5,6,7,7A,8,9( Sunday only service), 12,15(Evening and Sunday) X9( Jointly with Stockton Depot) 516,527 it was not perfect but most areas where served but the problem is Stagecoach since they took over have axed Services. As for the profit they used to make additional income from having a coaching unit available for private hire alongside doing excursions but that was all axed around 2002 even though it was successful. They also used to have the X99 to metrocentre which ran for many years which was also axed around 2002. So Stagecoach really have themselves to blame by
1) cost cutting over the years getter to the current situation of where a depot that was making profit now barley breaks even.
2) Not keeping up with passengers habits by having routes to place’s passengers will want to go to.
3) By not having a big enough budget to keep the buses in good condition. If the buses were kept decent people would use them more but it’s well known with the Hartlepool fleet you never know if will you get a journey down without it breaking down or having a problem. I personally used to joke that alpha kept a truck in the town due to how often breakdowns would happen and it’s not a joke I once witnessed two breakdowns with hours of each other.