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If you have it just before the six weeks holiday, it could make families more likely to use the bus for a day trip. That said, if that was your intention, you might be best off moving the week a bit later.

The thing about Croydon is that more than anywhere else in Greater London, it feels like an independent place. If Croydon was properly separated from London it would be one of the 10 biggest cities in the country, and it has the full range of what you'd expect from a place of its size - a...

I'm surprised those are the directions you chose - Croydon, Dagenham, and Woolwich are hardly gorgeous! Heading south or east, it's all pretty grotty until past Epsom or Bromley. In fact the only direction without many grotty suburbs would probably be south west (though even then there is...

I am, though most of my dad's side of the family is from South London (which is definitely less aggressive than Oxford, but neither is quite like Central or parts of North London). The south = less friendly hypothesis definitely breaks down once you cross into Wiltshire and the South West...

I have a massive soft spot for Swindon (and Reading too). But that's because I'd definitely nominate my own city for this - Oxford may seem like a picturesque and affluent place on the surface, but scratch beneath and you'll see one of the most divided cities in the country. I grew up in a rough...

Unfortunately even if you do that, there's inevitably going to be problems elsewhere, whether it be Swindon/Shrivenham, Bournemouth/Lymington, Cambridge/Newmarket, or Northampton/Milton Keynes. All pairs of towns with close links, but where one side is in the Home Counties, and the other isn't...

Having some sort of multi-operator ticket, which would effectively increase the service to 3 buses per hour thanks to the X60, would help too.

Consett has a handful of Weardale Travel routes, North Shields has a few Arriva services from Tynemouth passing through, and Selby has a handful of independents. But all three are pretty close to having just the one operator.

My experience of the X24 is that it works due to the lack of metro services: most passengers are travelling from West Sunderland to/from Newcastle, and the end to end journeys are fairly minimal (though not non existent).

I've just done some digging, and found a spreadsheet showing operator market share by local authority. Unfortunately it only works at a county level in most cases, and there's only one area with a monopoly (the Isle of Wight). However, North East Lincolnshire, Darlington, and Reading all have...

Canterbury seems to only have Stagecoach services, and is a city of about 55,000. I might be missing a minor service but I don't think so.

There is an hourly X80 service now, but that almost certainly would not exist if it wasn't for the existence of Bluewater and Lakeside, which are more recent developments. Another tunnel with poor service is the Tyne Tunnel. Nexus have to fund the route through there, and Go North East have...

There was formerly a Stagecoach service from Gloucester to Bristol known as the Belles Express, but it did poorly and was withdrawn. I think in part it was because Stagecoach tickets weren't valid, and a special ticket was required. From Oxford there's a few: there was once a service to...

Shrivenham and Watchfield (which are technically two separate villages but completely contiguous) have a population of 4,569. The S6 is their only service, but it does run very frequently - I'd suggest anywhere on a high frequency route like that could be a candidate since they could have a good...

Ah, I must have been lucky/unlucky, since the last three I've seen have been electric. They do look really distinctive though.

GoAhead are putting electric buses on a lot of routes - the 500 Park and Ride in Oxford has them now, and they're also being put on the 53/54 in Tyneside.

Weirdly, I've only seen the prefix E used in the context of differing evening routes - the current Go North East route 45E runs from Newcastle to Consett but runs via the route of the 47 as far as Blackhall Mill, then rejoins the 45 route again. In terms of mileage and time, it's actually a...

It's the worst time of year for this to happen to them too, since you'd think there'd be more recreational travel in the summer (which is probably their main market). So it's hard to see them recovering very well.

My personal favourite example of this is the X1X (already mentioned earlier), which are peak time express services between Bristol and Weston-super-Mare via the M5. Mind, there are some legitimate uses for that format. Stagecoach seem to put S in front of all their "cross-country" routes in...

Before the opening of Oxford Parkway (on a different line), Kidlington would have a decent claim, being a fair distance from Hanborough, Tackley, and Oxford. Uffington is too perhaps too small and too far from the railway, but is 12 miles away from Swindon (16 from Didcot). The problem is the...