(28 Jul 2025, 4:00 pm)L469 YVK wrote If I was in GNE's shoes - I'd be more frightened by Arriva's new MD having commercial info / experience eventually filtered down to NE & Yorks management, which could be used to attack the 21 & X21, especially with a depot in Belmont and existing services 6 & X12 which could be 'enhanced' or changed to provide competition on the Durham - Newcastle stretch.
Probs for another thread but idk where you've got in your head that Arriva are about to launch some attack on GNE. The 6 has only decreased in frequency over time, now at 20 mins compared to 12, and they've had years to re-increase the X12 between Durham and Newcastle but never done it.
The only imaginative thing Arriva have done off their own back in god knows how many years is enhancing links to Teeside Park, coincidentally one of the places where franchising doesn't look likely. Meanwhile in NECA land, with franchising and local authority control on the horizon, where's the incentive for imagination or competition for that matter? The industry now is moving towards partnership and working together. It's commendable that Northstar have bitten the bullet for the summer months and restored some services of time gone by, but we're still not quite in the realm of regular new/competing service or all out bus war - feel like the last time we properly had that was the Darlington to Crook corridor with the OK1 and the Newcastle to Hexham corridor with the X84/5 and sadly GNE is a very different company these days.
