(11 hours ago)Andreos1 wrote Who said anything about extra drivers?
There's route management for a start.
Such as terminating the X93 Middlesbrough bound, at Guisborough and ensuring connections with the 5.
There's running shuttles between Whitby and Scarborough.
There's working in partnership with Transdev and/EYMS, for cross-service ticketing between Whitby/Pickering and Pickering/Scarborough.
Howay man Superman.
I can see there may be some gaps in your understanding of how bus operators function, so I’ll take that into account.
While those points are noted, they do not address the practical challenges around drivers’ duties and working hours. Drivers reporting on or being in incorrect locations at key times within their normal duty allowance, some without sufficient time to cover the proposed split duties or unrelated services. Resolving this requires additional drivers and significant coordination, and it is not something that can be arranged at the last minute—or even within just a few days.
Very crude and basic example -: Turning the X93 at Guisborough simply places the driver arriving from Whitby onto the timings of the previous trip for the return journey. As a result, they would arrive back in Whitby an hour earlier than their scheduled duty. The question then arises: what is the driver expected to do with that time? Their duty (or first element of) still ends at the originally scheduled time, and there is no productive work to fill the gap. Imagine this 12 times per day just for this short suggested change.
This very simple and one-off example highlights how such an approach would, by default, require additional staff to cover the operation—ultimately leading to an inefficient and unsustainable arrangement.
Additionally, directly contacting a competitor to agree on a ticketing arrangement, while it may seem like common sense to some, is strictly prohibited under competition law. This is not something a single operator could initiate or manage unilaterally.
So, "howay man!" Think about it.