(17 Sep 2021, 10:35 pm)Adrian wrote I do however think there's been a lack of foresight here. As mentioned, national labour shortages have been in the media for months now, so I'd be really surprised if these so-called industry insiders weren't briefing operators even before then. I'm more surprised that we haven't seen the implementation of a reduced/emergency timetable by operators yet, reducing some of the high frequency services to allow some staff to be used as 'hot spares' to cover short-notice sickness etc. It would feel like a better solution than the current firefighting.
I wonder, in GNEs case, if it would have been a better idea to postpone some of the service extensions at the start of September. Things like the X1 extensions to Peterlee and Dalton Park, and the 21 extension to Brandon will no doubt increase driver requirements for those depots - and the 21 in particular seems to be getting cancelled with some frequency. In other words, look after the network they have and try to expand when they have sufficient resources to do so.