(11 Jan 2025, 12:24 pm)Storx wrote 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.


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).



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.

Noticed two 78s Sunderland bound at Penshaw yesterday PM. 
With a 2 sandwiched between them.

Quite why/how a half hourly service is shadowing the earlier board...