Arriva North West - Birkenhead Depot

[E400]

RE: Arriva North West - Birkenhead Depot
Arriva's offering really didn't cut it in the end. Even before Stagecoach went Gold, Arriva had too little presence on the route to make people associate them with it. They really should have had a greater share in the 2, and possibly the 1 also, and should have made it Sapphire as soon as they got the faintest whiff of Stagecoach considering Gold.

The truth is though, that the 1/2 are 2 of only 4 routes that Stagecoach operate in Wirral (minus route variants and schools), so they were always going to throw everything they had at maintaining and ultimately taking control over these services. And to be fair to them, the Gold buses offer a very good service. It will be interesting to see how the new 2 route fares now that it serves a much larger population going through Tranmere and Bebington.

Will we see Arriva on Birkenhead to Chester services again? I doubt it, but they gave it a good shot. I just can't understand how they went from filling Palatine 2s on the old 411 and 412 to just a handful of passengers rattling around in Pulsars. Their last real shot at retaining a slice of the Birkenhead-Chester corridor was lost when the X8 was introduced - had Arriva taken the leap to reintroduce the X11 then maybe things would be different, but it is clear why this didn't happen.