(1 hour ago)Adrian wrote [ -> ]Needed to travel into Newcastle yesterday, so used the bus and Metro. Out of the 3 GNE buses I used (Washington depot), none of them had a working next stop announcement system. The new Metro, on the other hand, was absolutely fine.
Given this is a legal requirement for vehicles first used during the 2010s now, I'd have thought we'd have seen less examples of this. When I looked back through my notes, 5361 had the same screen fault that I saw back in November. I wonder how many people have driven this bus and failed to note and report it.
Have I been incredibly unlucky, or is this still a common issue?
Picking on GNE is a little harsh. They were one of the first in the region to have working NSA inside most vehicles. Because everybody else is now playing catch-up, and using the bandwidth of the suppliers, they are now bottom of the list for fault fixing.
(1 hour ago)Kimlfixit wrote [ -> ]Picking on GNE is a little harsh. They were one of the first in the region to have working NSA inside most vehicles. Because everybody else is now playing catch-up, and using the bandwidth of the suppliers, they are now bottom of the list for fault fixing.
Picking on them? I've made an observation based on the buses I used yesterday. If Arriva, Stagecoach, Lothian of Derwentside or any other operator served the route I needed to travel, I'd make a similar observation.
If a global company the size of the Go-Ahead Group has allowed itself to hit the bottom of the list for support with a supplier, then they need to be managing that relationship better.
I don't use buses regularly enough to notice patterns or trends nowadays, which is why I posed the question, but for 5361 to have the same broken screen for 5 months is unacceptable.
GNE are really inconsistent
On the new Angels - the announcements are really quiet but the far more useful next stop display rarely works, insteady showing irrelevant consultations and random GNE adverts
On the Cobalts - the screens and announcements don't work aside the DFDS buses where they are deafening