(6 hours ago)Busadvocate wrote Assuming no alternative backfill that we don't know about yet (perhaps evening 56 extensions?):
- Loss of 104 means Newfield won't have any buses; it's only a quite small community, but there are very few such places in County Durham with literally no regular bus service. 
- Loss of 35A means also without evening services are Chilton Lane, Kirk Merrington and the Dean Bank area of Ferryhill, and there will be no evening service linking Ferryhill and Spennymoor. 35A was an odd route, but it was giving at least a limited evening service to these various communities. In pre-Covid years it ran hourly for the full evening, and did have fair use. Wasn't it still meant to be hourly when the contract was awarded to Hodgson in succession to Scarlet Band, but a combination of driver shortage plus anti-social behaviour (stone-throwing etc) meaning the service dropped from a 2 bus to a 1 bus operation on a token two-hourly timetable? 

But in the end, perhaps the truth is that for whatever reason the demand for such services has withered away - pubs and clubs closing, Bishop Auckland not being the place it once was, etc - so regrettably money in subsidy budgets doesn't stretch that far any longer? I fear there are other cases in the region where that will be coming into question.

Regarding BSIP: it seems not to be generally appreciated that throughout the region, a significant part of the BSIP and successor funding  had to be allocated to cover the increasing subsidy required to maintain existing services in the face of reduced passengers, including picking up services that previously had been operated without subsidy. Effectively, as part of that, 35A and 104 were being kept afloat with BSIP. Hopefully some backfill may yet emerge, but perhaps a weekday daytime link between Sedgefield and Newton Aycliffe is actually a more important alternative use of the money.

Yeah some fair points and definitely can't argue. They badly need something though imo; it's effectively cutting off communities completely and no malice to the places they're not exactly some of the most thriving places so the sort of places where people are likely actually need a bus.

I do think having random routes at night is confusing though, it badly needs to be the day time service really as arguably Durham and Darlington are more likely where people want to be anyway but obviously money and a council which is falling apart by incompetence is a bit of an issue really.