(04 Mar 2026, 8:05 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote May be a bit of rose tinted memory here but to be fair I think in the 90s there was a fair bit of innovation, at least in terms of reacting to competition. Even the 00s now dont seem that bad - to me it was around the 2010s onwards when the stupid hub and spoke model became king and the networks were really decimated by cutting anything that wasnt a high freqency corridor into a hub. No idea how much of it was driven by the spectre of franchising/QCS/whever it was before that, but the timings certainly line up.
I'm not sure painting a teenage bus blue and making the competition in Newcastle disappear was that innovative.
Greedy? Of course.
Like a dog marking it's territory and trying to scare away anything that comes close? Definitely.
I've got the same opinion of goings on in Darlo too.
I remember the excitement of buses racing each other and drivers really buying in to the whole rivalry/must win at all costs mentality.
But innovative? Nah.