I watched the video and I thought it was very good. I treated It for what it is, a video showing what buses can be like, and in my experience of all the operators and areas featured, it was right. Yes it's a 10% club job, but between the lines it's really a subtle criticism of the dross served up by some companies and local authority partners.

After watching it, what become apparent to me is the issue in the North East is main routes are treated like secondary routes and secondary routes are treated appallingly. If you go to places from that video like Harrogate, Brighton and Bournemouth, the main routes have new, high spec buses. The secondary routes use cascaded vehicles and aren't as frequent. Not unusual.
The difference being they are given the same care and attention in terms of cleanliness and how the network fits together.  It might not be what everybody wants (who wouldn't want a 10 minutes service instead of 30), but at least it makes sense and at least the buses are presentable and clean. Some of Brightons older buses are in better nick than the GNE equivalents!

The level of local authority roadside information and general publicity is quite frankly atrocious. I challenge anybody to go to the Brandling Arms stop on Gosforth High Street and tell me in 20 seconds when the first X bus to Newcastle is. You can't, as for some reason each individual route has its own table instead of combined. I've genuinely seen people "give up" while trying to read that very display. I know people dunk on Ray Stenning, but he's right when he's said previously that the stop is a shop window. They should be better.

Same with commercial operators. How are they getting the message out about the service they offer? Are they just expecting people to "know" where to look? Are they getting in people's faces about the services they offer? Why aren't there comprehensive timetable books like Morebus can do? Arriva don't make many timetable changes, there is no excuse why they couldn't do something similar for South East Northumberland - They are doing that in Medway!. Why aren't leaflets available on buses like they are in places such as Reading, Brighton and Nottingham? Why can't I pick up a timetable from a timetable rack, like at Harrogate Bus Station?

Granted, Stagecoach at least do something. But did you know that Arriva has actually produced a piece of publicity for the X18 service? Neither did I until I saw it in a leaflet holder at the customer desk in
.........Newcastle Centeal Station of all places. Nothing on Buses and nothing at Haymarket. That would make too much sense wouldn't it?

Ticketing is like something from the dark ages. We are one step removed from blackboards and chalk. The North East is still faffing around with Smart cards, an elderly technology. It's  2024 and you still can't use a bank card to tap in and out of the Metro. Meanwhile, as the video demonstrates, Leicester are already doing Bus Multi-operator Tap on Tap Off with daily and weekly capping. Leicester! It's not even a traditional PTE area. Nottingham has the Robin Hood Card. West Yorkshire has the MetroCard app, which actually works seamlessly across Bus and Train. What have we got?

This may seem unfair, but I truly believe that most of those in senior positions, making the final decision about public transport and buses in the North East, be that operators, elected officials or in the public sector, don't really care how it all fits together as they don't use it. There are a couple of exceptions I know of, but for the most part, I think that's true.

At the end of the day we are talking about something as fundamental as a human being able to get from one place to another. It's not hard to get the basics right to at least make it easier for that to happen.