Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

[mr t]

RE: Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot
The 79C was used because when it was introduced in 2002, it was actually the 79C to Liverpool - Caldway Drive that was extended to Runcorn being combined with the 30 from Hough Green.
At the time Arriva was in intense competition from various operators especially the 78/79s, and Merseytravel had a waiting list of services apparently who wanted to use Queen Square Bus Station, so if Arriva had withdrawn their original 79C and introduced a new service or number, they wouldnt have been able to serve Queen Square as they would have dropped to the bottom of the "queue", and so hence why the original 79C was just extended and left as a 79C.
This is also the reason why the 79C had to be run off the Arriva Merseyside ops disc for years, instead of the Arriva North West one that the other Runcorn services were.