(Yesterday, 12:07 pm)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.
And it inevitably will be all over the shop. But there's ways and means, like you mentioned. Plus plenty of others.
(Yesterday, 4:15 pm)Superman wrote 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.
I imagine there's only so much that can be done/allowed, can't imagine dropping a section would go down well with the traffic commissioners or whoever else who overseas such matters, also can't imagine passengers would be happy with their journeys being made longer by having to get a bus with a longer journey time especially when anyone wanting to go all the way to/from Scarborough will have their journey made longer later when it has to divert between Whitby & Scarborough.
Don't know the ins and outs of allowing mutual ticketing agreements in these scenarios, but the 128 & 840 timetables/routes aren't really suitable for an alternative travel option given both routes only run every 2 hours presently and there's only so much capacity especially when both the X93/X94 and 840 can carry full loads without carrying another's passengers. If possible, the only worthwhile section to allow mutual ticketing acceptance would be the Cloughton to Scarborough stretch which is being omitted by Arriva as a result of the diversions but are covered by EY services, albeit Cloughton only has two buses per day, fortunately Arriva have the 95 to cover the stops between Whitby Town Centre and Sainsbury's.
Given the unpredictability and constantly changing situation with what's going on, it must be very difficult to plan for anything in advance, on Tuesday they had to plan to both divert to Scarborough but also still cover Robin Hoods Bay, but for the last two days they've not been able to get to Robins Hoods Bay, so have had to rethink things again.