Compass allocated Iveco MX06CTY to services 37/8X today, with a paper destination display hardly even being visible behind the driver's wiper.
What's more irritating, is that for the first time, I saw the ticketing process that goes on on these 'vans'. Without ticket machines for obvious reasons, I saw the driver of service 37 issuing green paper slips on which he had to write the ticket details with a pen. The driver subsequently ripped part of this green paper slip away from the main part of the book, very much like a raffle ticket book.
Following on from discussion in the Gateshead Central Taxis thread - an operator also renowned for operating 'van-like' buses on their contracted services - it begs the question: Why are these operators still being awarded contracts? While I can understand that it makes commercial sense to Nexus to award these contracts on the basis of the cheapest bid, it does make you wonder why Nexus cannot see that the quality of the bus service is immensely low (especially on contracts previously operated by some of the bigger operators and/or the contracts which are jointly operated by one big operator and one smaller independent).
Without getting too off-topic (as I appreciate we have a separate thread for this), with the threat of Quality Contracts upon us, it makes you wonder whether the parties who put in the cheapest bid will continue to be awarded these contracts - regardless of the quality provided by these operators... Or, does that appeal more, given that fines will be issued?
