(25 Mar 2016, 3:10 pm)Ambassador wrote Speaking of high demand. A 40 minute wait for a 21. Outrageously bad.
This happens every bank holiday (and reliability is awful on Sundays too)
You'd think they'd learn to react to demand
I agree the 21 was not only suffering timing problems yesterday as capacity seemed to be proving an issue as well. My experience yesterday was arriving in to Eldon Square at 18:05 for a 21 to Chester le Street with next bus due display showning as 18:15. The 18:15 bus arrived at 18.25 dropped off passengers at the set down stand and left Eldon Square empty. The 18:30 bus then arrived on time but a huge backlog of customers were rammed into the bus. On departure from Gateshead all of the top deck seats were taken, there were standing passengers on the lower deck and there was even children sitting on the stairs. I can understand the need to regulate buses to get them back on time but capacity also needs to be considered when considering regulating a service.
Eldon Square bus station had huge queues going back to the front door with no visibility of staff from Nexus or the bus operators to manage the situation. Nexus should have had cover for health and safety and GNE could have managed the capacity of people waiting verses regulating buses if they had a supervisor present at Eldon Square on busy public holidays.
Stagecoach also had issues with capacity and / or frequency on the X88 when I was at Eldon Square with the queue for that service back to the front door and the allocated late running Enviro 400 departing with standees.
In conclusion not only do operators needs to review service provision on a public holiday they also need to provide a greater level of supervision to manage the situations that might occur with capacity. Those responsible for bus stations need to have staff attending on Public Holidays when passengers numbers require it.
