(20 Mar 2022, 8:48 pm)Adrian wrote Yet not a peep out of Arriva - either on Social Media or the website.I'm just pleased I have enthusiast insight and knowledge of some running boards which helps me to some degree to guess if a journey will run or not, if starting from Darlington Town Centre however it's pot luck as the bus could arrive but then not take up another trip. App stating journeys as cancelled is at least somewhat helpful although this isn't always reliable and have been caught out, few weeks back had a 7 showing as cancelled but later would run for me in part as it started part way down the route (Darlington bound) and other hiccup was an X1 journey showing as cancelled when in actual fact it was running but was having tracking problems (ticket machine seemingly wasn't working).
GNE are getting a lot of criticism for cancellations and delays at the moment, and rightly so, but I do think that some of it is due to the level of transparency they're offering. Strictly speaking, there's nothing mandating them to publish cancellations or even notify the public of them, but they opt to do so. Some other operators, such as Transdev, are working along the same lines, but others aren't even giving their customers the decency of any information.
Looking at Darlington's 7 yesterday, and at a glance I can see the: 08.02, 10.42, 11.42, 13.22, 14.22 and 16.02 from Darlington didn't run, nor did the 09.24, 12.04, 13.04, 14.44, 15.44 and 17.24 from Durham. Not a single post to tell anyone that was the case.
Its a universal problem without any consistency. There needs to be a lot more done for customers faced with disruption, otherwise you'll never build confidence up with customers.
Interesting to note with your example of the 7, of the journeys listed as cancelled one was the same board that didn't run at all that day and the other was initially 7537 but dropped off after performing the 10:24 7 from Durham but 7537 would later reappear on a 1/5/5A/X1 board commencing with the 13:45 1 to Bishop Auckland - 1605 was previously on this board but was taken off (this seemed to happen for much of the day on the 1/5/5A/X1 cycle that day).