Bustimes.org is all anyone needs to figure out the where/when/what regarding journeys they already plan to make, whether in the next few days or next few minutes.

Branding is the best way to alert potential future customers that a bus does actually exist can meet their future needs. It worked for me, several times.

This doesn't matter in London because most people have no real choice but to use the bus, and are deeply envious of those lucky few who have other options, regardless of whether that is a tube/train or a taxi/car. TfL is making a big effort to brand SUPERLOOP precisely because they know that in those outer areas, where people actually have a choice, usually a private car, they already know those people really wouldn't notice that the X26 has been renumbered the SL3, let alone the reason for that is because it has a slightly faster and more direct route and runs far more frequently as part of a nominal outer London loop. To those people, a bus is just a bus, easily ignored if you have no pressing need to know the network.

That is what a bland corporate identity does. Most people are normal, they don't spend their days remembering the number of the various buses they see in their daily lives, or poring over network maps, just on on off chance they one day might need that specific route.

Evolution is a powerful force, and it has given humans an uncanny ability to spot patterns in the visual environment for a reason. Evolution knows nothing of numbers and maps.

I only know the X1 that works its way through tiny streets in deepest darkest Durham is the same X1 that I see every time I arrive arrive Newcastle by bus, because it's branded. I have no pressing need to make that journey today, but who knows what tomorrow brings. Those places are well within my daily sphere.

What I do know from basic common sense, is that up here in the north east, there is absolutely no reason to assume an X1 seen in two different places tens of miles apart, is the same route.