(22 Oct 2022, 4:08 pm)Adrian wrote Metro replacement today... shambles. The 901 especially.
At Heworth, they had St James bound Metros off P1 and Airport bound Metros off P2, but aside from a handwritten notice telling you, the staff weren't bothering to split footfall evenly between the two. P2 was extremely busy when I was there, yet I and a few others managed to walk onto an empty Metro on P1.
Upstairs in the bus station, Nexus had decided that both the 900/X900 and the 901 were going to use Stand R. This resulted in the queue being a couple of laps round the inside of that shelter, then outside and right back beyond the public toilets. The staff were all bunched at the top and no coordination of who was after which bus. Utter madness.
There was a high volume of football fans there at the time, including Burnley fans heading over to the SoL. A Nexus bod walked the line and was actually recommending people take taxis, as the next replacement bus would be about half an hour! Then when a 901 eventually turned up, JH Coaches had decided to put an Enviro 200 out, to the bemusement of people stood waiting.
Looking on tracking, everything seemed to be bunching up, with no one bothering to intervene and try and sort the situation out. Unorganised chaos.
I'm not sure what time this was but surely it would've made more sense to direct people to use the Northern Rail train towards Sunderland and walk back especially considering Day Savers are valid anyway.
No doubt it was chaos after the match aswell as per usual, since the Northern decided that a 2 carriage train was appropriate for it which seems to be the train after the one mentioned on the tweet below. Not sure what happened with the Class 158's as they all seem be out of service today.
If only we didn't scrap all the Pacer's as trophy politics and kept them in reserve and bolt them on the back of a Class 156 for days like today. I'm sure people would much rather have a bus seat than being left on the platform. It's not as if there wasn't an abundance of parts from all the ones being scrapped to keep a few going.