(11 Jan 2025, 7:48 am)Dan wrote Mileages were once balanced between Yutong boards at Riverside, ensuring all were roughly the same mileage so that they didn’t run out of charge.

I am told that is no longer the case, with discrepancies in how many miles each bus operates. This could be in a bid to improve driver efficiency, at the expense of running the correct vehicle type.

At this time of year, charge is degrading more rapidly because more electric is being used to keep the buses warm.

Pair both together, and that’s why school buses operate the 53/54 and Q3 most of the time on evenings.

Must admit, doesn't seem very sensible to me as surely the efficiency is lost by the fact there's now a vehicle swap being made and the dead runs which are coming with it, especially with the H service which I can't imagine the NHS being exactly happy about when it's the peak time boards.

(11 Jan 2025, 10:07 am)L469 YVK wrote Exactly this! Contrary to the previous commercial team who wanted minimum remote reliefs at Stanley on the Derwentside 'X' routes, this lot can't even implement a far more efficient interworking pattern that would release more E400MMC (low height) to help out at Riverside, where one of their X routes (X10) have not enough suitable spares / vehicles to rotate....and the other (X21) still being operated by unsuitable vehicles!

I'm not sure that this is the issue with this mind and it's more linked to whoever thought closing Chester Le Street down was a good idea without any real consultation and/or a replacement depot. When you've got staff striking over the situation, I wouldn't be exactly surprised if those same staff took their money for moving and then bolted at the first opportunity to somewhere closer. It's not like there's not ample jobs around for mechanics.

The reputation for GoNorthEast isn't particularly great and the wage isn't anything special either regardless to their bs 'upto' nonsense. 

It's not a surprise the only other depot which has had this problem is Arriva's Blyth depot which had the exact same problem but that one kind of made more sense since they had to leave Jesmond since the lease was up and building a new depot for pretty much only the 51/52/53/54/55 was never going to be sustainable with Covid.

Credit to Arriva though they got a grip of that, mainly because of Ashington loaning a chunk of their fleet. It seems like there's now 3 depots with GoNorthEast going South, it'll be interesting to see how they deal with this as less buses means flogging what's left and that usually ends up going one way and that's more and more off the road. It's a pretty dire situation, much worse than the driver issues imo as you can just hire some temps in to deal with that (if you actually want to deal with it).

(11 Jan 2025, 11:47 am)Andreos1 wrote Must admit, the boards I saw in the PM 'seemed' to be running to time.

But either way, divvying up the resources would make the most sense to me.

It may mean someone doing some work with a pen (or crayon if they can't be trusted) and paper to do something the computer can't tell them, but it offers some positive impact.

Aye didn't see any 4's yesterday so can't really comment on them was just getting some chips at West Rainton and that's where we saw a few 20's pass by, including two following each other - what ever happened to regulation...? Both were pretty much empty, similar to the one going the other way towards Sunderland aswell.