(05 Apr 2016, 7:07 pm)Dan wrote I still don't know how you've managed to conclude that Go North East is a terrible company, based on this bad experience? You've admitted yourself that you sometimes see empty Streetlites - imagine the cost to the company, if that was an articulated vehicle? Not forgetting the unnecessary pollution to the environment. There's a bus every 6-7 minutes and quite frankly if I see the queue building up before me boarding, I will wait for the next bus, which is likely to be a lot quieter. More could be done by Go North East to manage passenger loadings, but just because this resource is not present (excluding Christmas time when it is), does not make the company terrible.
Also picking up on your points about no longer defending the company - this is the problem I have with this hobby, at the moment. When I first started to get involved in the hobby, enthusiasts voiced their opinions but never did it seem like a personal vendetta against a company, so other enthusiasts didn't see the need to 'defend' the company. Too many enthusiasts (and this isn't a dig at you but a general observation) are becoming bitter and twisted over little things that they don't like, and it makes the hobby much less enjoyable for me, as it's led to snide remarks being made and hence disagreements between enthusiasts.
The other thing with today was I was actually was looking at the number of people in front and behind me when I got to the doors I could see that there was still enough seats and there was only about four people behind me and judging by how long the bus had been there by this point so I was expecting once these people boarded, the bus to be on it's way after this but sadly a rather large number of people appeared around this point and this is when it reached almost full capacity. I don't know why this is the case but StreetLite's seem to be a terrible bus to be on with full/high loadings, I came to the same conclusion on the Arriva Sapphire 5 when I was heading through Middlesbrough at school chucking out time.
This is the burning issue, it's always going to be difficult to get the capacity to match the loadings on the route, was the same with the articulated Citaro's, sometimes even they got really busy but there was occasions where you'd be the only person in the rear section of the bus.
Unfortunately for personal reasons I can't stand having to sit next to someone on an outside seat, a particularly scaring experience was when I waited for a Darlington bound 21 at Peterlee Moorcock one day and a Solo appeared and I walked to the back of the bus and no-one would move their legs and/or bags on the other seat so I had to do a walk of shame back to the front of the bus where I had to stand at the front of the bus where people could laugh at me! Had a similar issue on the Weardale 101 the other day as well, the worst example of that was trying to find a seat on the Arriva X66 when the coaches were used as everyone would sit on the outside seat and you couldn't really stand on them either so a seat had to be found. If I get a X93 during peak summer times, I will often arrive at the stop for the X93 back to Middlesbrough sometimes in excess of 30 minutes so I can get myself an inside seat, especially if I fear a Pulsar, Temsa or Streetlite is going to turn up.
I may have overreacted slightly with the whole "terrible company" thing but in recent weeks and months I have had some issues with buses being late and some not turning up at all, other issues have occurred with the worst being with a driver on the 19 where I tried to board the bus in North Shields and there was someone with a pushchair in the way so I had to ask them to move and as they moved the driver closed the doors and I had to signal that I wished to board and he opened the door and talked to me like absolute shite about it, sorry! I couldn't get to the doors as quick as you wanted me to! At this time I'm not liking the company for some of the bad things that have happened recently but hopefully my views will change again soon.
Unfortunately for personal reasons, I have disagreed with the allocation of StreetLite's on the X66 and today's experience has only added to that, sorry but this is just how I feel about this.