(25 Jul 2025, 7:48 pm)Dan wrote I spoke with the very kind bus station supervisor at the Metrocentre today.

It’s an agreement that this bus station supervisor is ‘fair and impartial’, but monitoring passenger loadings on a competitor’s route for ten minutes every hour probably isn’t considered to be ‘fair and impartial’.

Though it was abundantly clear what was happening, I decided to ask if he was making note of customer numbers. The bus station supervisor, seemingly somewhat embarrassed, did confirm that he had been tasked with this job. I mentioned that he possibly should consider feeding back that there might be catch traffic elsewhere on both routes and so making note of loadings at Metrocentre isn’t a true representation of patronage.

It follows other acts which may be considered as predatory and intimidating, including Head Office employees riding on the services in ‘plain clothes’ (posing as regular customers, not using their staff passes), and commercial team colleagues, perhaps coincidentally, driving training buses along the routes of the X22 and X43.

I dread to think how much management time has already been wasted on the X22 and X43. The priorities don’t seem to be quite right here, and if stakeholders were to be aware of this, there would be a significant amount of reputational damage to Go North East.