Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

[iMarkeh]

RE: Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

(31/12/2020 02:56)Raawwwrrr! Wrote:  The issue with the X1 is that it’s no longer profitable in each direction. Passengers travel to Liverpool in the morning and to Runcorn in the evening, very few make the trip in the opposite direction or during day, and quite simply it’s not cheap to run a limited stop service.

You could probably do what other operators do like Go North West and run the occasional X1 in each direction during peak hours (such as their x39) but the issue then becomes what does that bus do during the day? Does it just sit in the depot? Does it come off the 79c or 82a for example?

I think on top of that, you have this issue which Trimax200 pointed out

(24/12/2020 17:23)trixmax2000 Wrote:  I would say around 75% of passengers using this service have either Arriva Weekly & Day tickets and feed into the X1 from other Arriva services

From what I have seen and experienced with Arriva, they do not tend to use day and weekly ticket revenue to share out among routes which accept these passes. They seem to judge the viability of each trip depending on how much money was taken on that trip (IE a bus could be full but if it's all weekly pass users, in their eyes, it's not viable since no actual cash was taken). If, as Trimax says, 75% of passengers are using Arriva tickets bought on other services, that will be why Arriva claim it isn't viable even though a number of trips are very busy.
I think a further point is that the service has been plagued by the Arriva 'Death by 100 cuts' which has been a huge deterrent to passengers.