(2 hours ago)Economic505 wrote Small, at risk of fuel price hikes. This is not the time to repeat a City Transport type fiasco.

Just cos City wet the bed when it came to the Sunderland Connect contract, which is a whole other beast compared to the other Nexus contracts due to the hours and specifications required, it doesn't mean the same would happen with L&G or Northstar, neither of which have handed back the contracts they currently run for Nexus (or the likes of Hodgsons and Weardale for Durham County Council contracts).

L&G look to have kept things small and simple, the 99 operates between school contracts which L&G already run and the 939 operates before and after the school contracts, so it's entirely possible that they won't even need to aquire any more buses to run these services.

City seemed to get the Sunderland Connect more to prove a point that independents could run a big contract service like that, unfortunately to do so their bid didn't factor in any possibility of any rises of fuel or other operational costs and can't imagine the occasional fines from Nexus for non compliant buses helped either, so if anything, damaged the notion which they set out to do/prove.