(28 Jul 2024, 8:51 pm)Rob44 wrote Yeh I suppose But forgive me and I might be proved wrong but I just cant see

North star bid for all arriva northumbria routes

North star win all the routes between haymarket and Berwick

North star offer arriva "x" amount for garages in northumberland but arriva say no we are taking our bus stock to Liverpool and selling the land for houses.

Mayor jumps in and buys land at going rate i assume???

North star now has a garage with not enough buses ( or drivers for that matter) Change north star to any other company and its still the same.

I just can see it happening.  I bet 20p on 90% of the routes continued to be operated by the current operator unless THEY dont want to run them. 

But as you have put above we could all have passed to the other side if its going to take 5 years!

I mean, there's a lot of hypothetical questions there, but to try and answer some of them...

There's no link between an operators current services and what may or may not be included in a tender. It'll ultimately be up to the Combined Authority to decide. They may even decide to redraw some of the network at the same time. Just because GNE run X number of services in Gateshead, doesn't necessarily mean that there'll be one tender compromising with the same X number of Gateshead services. Its very early days, and we'll only find out more during and after the FSA has been drawn up.

Again, it's early days in terms of what will happen to the depots. The report states the FSA will look at this, and personally (but merely my opinion) I think the most sensible option is NECA purchase and lease back to the operator(s) running services in the area.

Arriva can of course refuse, in your hypothetical situation, but it'll almost certainly go down to a compulsory purchase and they'll get the value for it. That obviously depends on condition etc.

Arriva could also hypothetically take their fleet to Liverpool (or wherever else they like - it's their buses), but unless they win a massive amount of work than they currently have, they're going to have a lot of spare buses. Given the Liverpool City Region are going through the same process, I'd envisage Arriva ending up with less work than they currently have.

Time is of course a factor. There's so much factored in, because there's that many ifs and buts, and that's before statutory consultation starts. It is of course Labour Party policy to speed the statutory process up, so I'd expect the Mayor to be lobbying the DfT on this already.