(20 May 2025, 11:04 pm)S830OFT wrote I've seen that now the duty's have changed on the 1/2, there is also lots of drivers route training aswell. It must be costing for all of this, including all the dead mileage sending buses back & fourth throughout the day.
The bus at 17:56 was brought over to Saltburn for 2 hours to just carry near enough fresh air, then dead back to Stockton. There's a few like that, where the bus comes all the way from Stockton, does a few round trips, then replaced by service different bus & goes back to Stockton.
It worked so much better when the same two buses stayed at Saltburn for the whole day, with drivers travelling in cars to changeover. No doubt Stagecoach will be claiming all the dead mileage back that all these buses have been making...
It would make sense if the 1/2 could use Merc Sprinters, considering they are never anywhere near busy, and with Arriva having improved their reliability on the X4 now, it would make sense to run the service sustainably, so that it has a better chance to survive into the future...
The best way to run those services would be to get shot of them altogether and tell people to use the Teesflex service which is there for their exact purpose. You do either/or when it comes to DRT. Not both.