(16 Apr 2026, 10:27 pm)Busadvocate wrote I think how best to use the BSIP funding was a really tricky policy decision. It was unclear what successor funding would become available, with every reason to think it would be at a considerably lower rate. So a challenge to decide how to do things that would result in a sustainable continuing benefit. 

The services that Northumberland has used BSIP for seem mostly things that will always require indefinite funding. Things like services to Wooler or between Morpeth and the airport fills gaps in the network, and will find new passengers, but it would be miraculous if they ever got close to covering their costs. Nothing wrong with that in principle, but it means that if there is no successor funding the services have no future at all, so the new users would be left high and dry. 

The "kickstart" things Nexus did with GNE and Stagecoach is a different strategy that matches the time-limited profile of the BSIP grant. Temporary funding to rebuild frequencies that had been eroded during Covid, with the hope that they would regain the patronage that had made those higher frequencies viable pre-Covid. I'd be surprised if the operators were not required to contribute, too, and these will have been the services that in their commercial judgement were most likely to succeed. Even if for whatever reason the higher frequency can't be sustained, at least passengers won't be left with no service. 

Perhaps a case of "horses for course", and both are reasonable strategies, reflecting the different circumstances of Northumberland and Nexus?

Problem is now that operators know that authorities have BSIP funding they can go with their begging bowl not just for the least profitable/ socially necessary services but also for increases (or preventing decreases) on existing services which I would imagine do well enough to justify a commercial maintenance of or even increase in frequency/PVR albeit perhaps at a slight detriment (but not a loss) to the operator. And thus now this BSIP money is running out they're all putting them back to the frequencies they were on before, probably because they're holding out on the authorities giving them some more dough, when the whole idea was that the frequency increase would generate enough demand to support itself commercially going forward. Imo BSIP should be used to cover socially necessary services or to introduce new services, not to enhance the most profitable routes when really this is something operators should be doing themselves in order to build back patronage in a now 7-year post-Covid world. 

There's just no incentive for going out on a limb in the industry atm or doing more than the 'bare minimum' particularly with franchising on the horizon (unless you count the X1 going to Haswell Plough lol). Let's be honest I can't imagine many people who currently own a car are thinking hmm I'm gonna sell my car and start getting the bus, no matter how much fuel prices may increase and operators may buy shiny new vehicles etc etc. The bus is treated as something to serve those who don't have a car, and thus a social service, yet is run as a for profit business. One thing I do hope franchising might bring is the chance for the bus network to support itself and thus more profitable routes cross-subsidise less profitable ones, without all the focus being on profit, with any extra cash getting invested back into bus priority etc. At the very least franchising should make things more consistent and easier to use and might actually intrigue people enough to tempt them to give the bus a go if they don't already. Certainly given things like strikes at GNE, vehicle issues at Arriva Ashington etc in recent history I'm sure there are plenty who will have had not so fond memories of getting the bus and just had enough in the end and won't be tempted back now they're in the car, not while said operator who's let them down are still running the service.