(04 Aug 2022, 10:20 pm)DeltaMan wrote Go North East is simply too big to manage centrally as one company.

Split it up in to Go Wear (Sunderland, Washington), Go Northern (Consett, Hexham), Go Tyneside (Riverside, Percy Main)

Employ General Managers with full budget responsibility for the groups of depots assigned with them directly reporting to directors.

Carry out a route and branch review of how current members of the middle management team have performed.

Have meaningful regular dialogue with drivers. Be that a canteen session at lunchtime or a "you said, we did" for a newsletter. Even the smallest quick win shows that things are different.

In terms of service provision, I'd carry out a full audit of all services. profit and loss, route costing for each part of each route to see where there could be growth and where is completely dead.

Once a review of the current netowrk had been done I'd task somebody to Identify high employment areas and areas with high deprivation which are relatively undeserved (Hello Murton) and come up with realisitic proposals for better serving them within a budget to be defined after the network review.

Expand the commercial team. Give them the time to make informed decisions. Not seemingly going from one fire to the next at the whim of the senior management team, as seems to be the case.

Reduce the number of service changes, so that drivers aren't having shifts changed every few weeks and so that service changes can be properly thought out. Some might say that is scheduling to suit the company.  Well, without drivers you don't have a bus service. Chopping and changing shifts every few weeks 100% contributes to drivers leaving.

Shifts should only fundamentally change when the schools are out and on predefined service change dates.

Expand customer service hours back to pre covid levels, with a basic 9 to 5 weekend service and a 7 til 7 weekday service. They are effectively a customer retention team, so give them time to retain customers when things go wrong.

Get rid of all route branding. Return to area based liveries.

Look to expand Tap on Tap Off as soon as possible.

Get rid of all cash fares and introduce a 7 day cap with no geographical boundary. With Tap in tap out, nobody is going to notice the price unless they forensically look at a bank statement. Instantly removes the plethora of tickets.

Is that really the best idea with the COL situation? What about older people who might still rely on cash? Children who get pocket money? I know it works in places like London but they also have an intergrated transport and smartcard system. We on the other hand do not.