(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.

Whilst clearly there's nothing stopping someone from standing and totting down numbers using a bus service, when it's an employee of a competitor (and knowing the issues they have), you do feel that their time could be better spent elsewhere.

I'll remind everyone that when they had that spell of major disruption, including some routes having zero buses in service for periods of time, they chose not to put a single member of their management team on the ground to deal with customers. 

What about engaging with their own customers and their experiences in using their services? Just at a glance right now, you've got one X45 running 20 minutes late and another running 12 minutes late. What's the loadings like on the X66? Again, they seem to be late running. Surely that time would be better spent engaging with the users of these services, and maybe they wouldn't go seeking alternatives.

This company has decimated their network over the past couple of years, not to mention sitting back and letting the quality of their operation go down the pan. I think it's rich that they're now interested again when someone has decided to take the risk on fixing links that they've left behind.

At a time where the region is likely to undergo the biggest bus transformation that anyone younger than 40 won't have seen, I really think that this company need to decide whether they're serious about running a business as adults.