(08 Jan 2022, 4:20 pm)mb134 wrote Regardless of the decision to reduce service level, it's beyond belief that the driver decided to risk their livelihood to get a few extra punters into town. They shouldn't have been put in that position by the company anyway, but you don't go and make it worse by allowing folk to stand upstairs and inevitably also breaking capacity limits.
It was well publicised that today's cup game was going to be essentially sold out well in advance, which makes the decision to cut service to a Sunday level even worse.
Absolutely. The sell-out at St James' should have rang alarm bells when the decision was made to revert to a Sunday timetable at extremely short notice, and it should have been a priority to ensure there was additional capacity available on the X1 before and after the match.
Having that many people in a confined space just isn't safe at the moment, even with the windows open, and that's before you get into the issue about passengers being allowed to stand upstairs.
(08 Jan 2022, 6:02 pm)Jimmi wrote Terrible thing is, it's situations like this that is swaying drivers into leaving, whatever drivers do it's a lose/lose situation and they're often the ones that get the grief from the passengers when things go wrong.
The idea of most services running a Sunday timetable on a Saturday effectively halving the capacity on busy runs like the 20 & X1 is certainly not an attractive concept to me and those that faced the issues from this today will most likely come to the same conclusion for as long as this goes on for and maybe even a permanent mindset for not using public transport to many.
(08 Jan 2022, 6:15 pm)Andreos1 wrote But should be.
Additional resource to answer issues, queries, questions may counter some of the loss of goodwill passengers have towards operators on days like today.
Maybe getting all hands on deck and ensuring those at the top are leading by example.
Drivers have been put in the firing line today by this decision. An unacceptable amount of notice, leaving most customers unaware, and then no one available at customer services to contact instead.
Sadly I think it stems from an industry attitude of not being accountable to customers, and that people will continue using services out of necessity anyway.