(23 Jan 2022, 9:50 am)54APhotography wrote There was no carnage being alluded to Dan, I stated exactly what I saw taking two autistic relatives to the Galleries on a 2. The elderly people were waiting at the 2 stop, the furthest away from the entrance, they said nobody was around to ask, nobody told them about the service reduction and they didn't use phones ,like the youngsters. They were full of hell. And you should know the way old folk chatter, all of them were angry and were told why, told what time their bus would be . I didn't have to do that , but found it preferable to a journey with half a bus full of people slagging off the bus company.
Otherwise my only comment was the one to which you agreed - that Streetlites should have been allocated to the 39.

The truth of the matter however was that there probably was someone around to ask - as I mentioned in my previous post both Nexus and Go North East had supervisors in the interchange, but they tend to be closer to Greggs in between 'walkarounds'. In my experience there tends to be at least one driver on the 'ABC' side of the interchange waiting to relieve an incoming 60/61/62/X6 (especially as the latter two are on Saturday timetables), who would have also been nearby to ask.

If the posters are still up (there's no reason why they would have been taken down), then in print at each stand there's something that tells customers to use the Sunday timetable, which is of course at every stand on the liner.

The point I'm making is that there are options - for people in Park Lane at least - to gain access to the information. There is room for improvement:

• the digital displays could be updated to show Sunday times on a Saturday - but this is an infrastructure issue outside of the operators' control
  
• Customer Services could be open to take phone calls for those customers who do not feel confident enough to use a digital method (website/app), a print method (the bus stop liner), or to ask someone on-site.
  

As we've discussed on many occasions in the past, it comes down to a cost vs benefit situation. Presumably staffing levels in GNE's customer services team decreased when opening hours reduced at the start of the pandemic, making it more difficult to cover weekends without reliance on overtime. Presumably digital displays could be updated, but it would cost a lot of time for local authorities, when, as we know, the situation is changing very regularly for all three operators, with dates often not aligned to each other.

With regards to the negative chitter-chatter - it's commendable you helped those customers - but you'll never completely get away from this. Last weekend I went to Toby Carvery at Barnes Park for breakfast. On arrival, I discovered that they were closed due to staff shortages. There had been posts the previous weekend on social media to advise customers, and there have been posts since. For me, there was no forewarning, and no explanation. I'm not oblivious to the staff shortages being faced in all sectors currently, but I was quite annoyed because it was time and money wasted. I even told a few friends about it (negative chitter-chatter!) I think I have said it previously but the bus industry seems to be facing more criticsm than other sectors who are going through the exact same thing, although this is probably down to there being a reliance on the bus as a public service.