(14 Dec 2014, 7:43 am)Dan wrote Yes, I think it would have been an incident en-route paired with increased loadings for the match.
All services, including those not operated by Go North East, seem to encounter delays on match days, even if they do not serve the Stadium of Light. I can only imagine that this is not a coincidence and is in fact due to higher loadings.

I'm not sure how many journeys per day there are on services 20/20A or how much mileage in total is operated, but if two trips were missed out today, I immediately look at the bigger picture and don't assume that the reliability is awful because of this. I must say that depots should not be dropping two 20-minute frequency routes in a row though, Andreos, so ask your friend to report the incident to Go North East so it can be fully investigated.

It goes without saying that Go North East and other operators continuously seek to improve the reliability of their routes to reduce lost mileage (and hence the associated costs with no revenue being generated) as well as customer inconvenience. Where resources permit, further buses can be pumped into the PVR. There are no spare Volvo B9TLs or Mercedes Citaro vehicles at the moment which is why we will see services 27 and 56 reduced to a 12 minute frequency. The PVR will reduce by one vehicle, even though in both cases it could have been two. This means that the amount of layover, paired with recovery time en-route, will be much greater. The other option is to optimise the routes in a specific area and join them together, allowing resources to be shifted around accordingly. This will happen to most of the routes in Sunderland due to change next month. Indeed, Michael and I worked out that the PVR of services 20/20A could be 18 with minimal layover/recovery time - I'm confident it will be higher than this - we'll come back to this conversation once the timetables are released and the repainting of vehicles confirm the amount required for the PVR, and this will show how extending services 20/20A to South Shields will improve reliability.

I'm never around Park Lane immediately before and after kick off and wasn't aware other services were adversely affected. Maybe Tom, if you were at Park Lane yesterday, could shed some light on delays to other services? 
I think the consensus on this forum, is that a route every 10 minutes on such a long route could be a nightmare. It's not uncommon to see 20's running in pairs and around 9am, it's not uncommon to see a big que for the 20, much longer than any other service I'd say. I think though we do have to accept the decision has been made and remember things like the 50 seemingly work okay? Time will tell whether GNE & NEB got it right on this one!