To labour the point, the branding is not there to attract the attention of people already familiar with the service because they use it regularly. It would be no surprise that those people can just about tell the approaching bus has the right number. I doubt they even notice if the destination is wrong. And in that specific case, as far as I know, it no longer even has a name. It used to be the Red Arrow, now it is just the red variant of X-Lines. The gold and red makes it instantly recognizable. That is the brand, in simple terms.

If the bosses took the unwise step of deploying a generic gold livery for X lines, even though in their minds that is just a few routes in their empire, in practical terms, that means a person like me sees at least twenty different gold buses in an average day, miles apart. Too many to care where they go beyond the vague idea they are meant as some kind of express network.

Which just brings us back to how bizarre it is to a person who lives in actual civilization, that their idea of an express network is also one that serves tiny out of the way villages. Seeing these buses randomly appear at very tight junctions, or being forced to wait for an old lady or tractor, never ceases to be a source of amusement. Seeing one the other day with a very smashed windscreen was hardly a surprise, since fast and frequent is hardly compatible with their routes touching the outer reaches of the galaxy.

But I find myself increasingly disinterested in the whys and wherefores of why a particular generic red Enviro decker is struggling up a steep bank, or why another one was circling its way around a long estate road, and whether both had the same route number, or even if this sort of thing is complementing or competing with the same boring generic nonsense of seeing Arriva Enviro Deckers trundling around doing the same thing, just with more pollution belching out the back

For all I know, the red bus is a local route and the blue bus can take you to far off mysterious places like Hartlepool. Then again, who would know in the current climate of bus companies giving very little concern to branding, if it was the exact opposite. In the old days you could rely on branding to tell you if GNE had suddenly made a grab for a place like Hartlepool. Now you would have no clue unless you saw the display.

To know for sure, I'd have to start scribbling down route numbers and consulting assorted poorly conceived proprietary apps and try to memorize what I learned for future reference. I'd rather spend my time taking in the scenery to be honest.

---

(16 Sep 2023, 10:32 pm)Andreos1 wrote In which case, you've yet again contradicted yourself, because the X1 goes nowhere near Horden.

Well, not nowhere near, but yes, point taken. I was wanting to say Easington Lane, but wanted an example that want obviously tied to the route, and for some reason, Horden came to mind.