(Yesterday, 9:58 pm)OrangeArrow49 wrote How would routes be grouped together if we do get franchising in the future? All of the routes into South Shields would be grouped together and operated by South Shields depot? So the 27 would leave Riverside and be grouped with the 24, 25, 26 and Stagecoach routes? What about the 50? Just interested how it will all move around. I thought everything stayed at the current depot and operators bid for them which gives them an operating area. Operators will bid for groups of routes and they will be moved into the nearest depot?
Presumably that means whoever gets Riverside will operate all of the Metrocentre routes? Be a huge change if that was Arriva! Except the 6/7 being operated by Slatyford and Northstar operating the X22 and X43, which presumably would still be ran by a different company than all of the Riverside services? 3 operators would still operate Metrocentre services, for example?
Probs not for this thread but it's all purely speculation so I wouldn't even bother to try and overthink which would routes would be operated from where and by whom. In the NE due to the amount of cross-over between depots and patches it would be quite complex, or not if they just kept all the depots the same, though you would argue there'd be lots of inefficiencies with that. The 50 for example could technically be operated from a depot in Durham, Washington, South Shields or Sunderland or a new depot altogether. Nobody knows how it would work. Having said all that if franchising did ever happen here wouldn't hold your breath on Arriva winning big given their lack of success elsewhere!