(26 Jul 2026, 1:37 pm)deanmachine wrote Because rather than Go North East taking the massive profits from the 21 and giving it directly to it's owners, it'll be reinvested in the bus network to pay for the smaller routes. Copy and Paste for the other operators and their profit making routes, especially Stagecoach's in Newcastle and Sunderland.
In theory, except they will just factor their profit into their tenders. Private opcos shareholders will still cream off profit, just via a slightly different mechanism (contract value rather than revenue). The financial savings, if there are any, are likely to come from improved integration, including removing duplicated services/routes. Whether a franchised network run by NEMSA and Nexus will be more efficient than the current offering from private operators remains to be seen.