(25 Nov 2014, 11:14 am)Dan wrote Idiot, I agree with parts of your post...I can accept that Dan and GNE cant keep everyone happy all the time...
Go North East is not stupid: this is why the company planned to undertake a consultation, enabling them to gather feedback from customers. As Andreos1 has correctly stated; without customers, there is no business. This is why it is vital for all bus operators to carry out some form of consultation when planning service changes - the best method to do this can be debated.
Go North East is carrying out changes to services which have strong competition from Stagecoach - would management really risk planning a poor consultation on purpose, when their customers could potentially go to the competition if the changes made leave them worse off?
As I have already suggested - the proposed changes are far from confirmed at this stage. Indeed, I understand there is an upcoming meeting with senior management and local councillors as well as Nexus to discuss the proposed changes, and how they would affect (positively or negatively) residents in Sunderland. Local councillors have prevented proposed service changes going ahead in the past - a (fairly) recent example would of course be the X3 service. Without wishing to spark a debate about this particular service, Go North East attempted to withdraw service X3 and replace it with service X36 quite some time ago, though local councillors insisted that it was vital to keep this service as it was well used by the residents of Boldon. Of course, the service has now been withdrawn, but this followed on from a low frequency service which was designed to work around scholars and keep costs down...
If local councillors kick up a fuss again this time, it is unlikely that the proposed service changes will go ahead in January. Another set of proposals will have to be created which meet the needs (or wants) of local councillors and Nexus as well as Go North East. If local councillors are happy that the changes will benefit the residents of Sunderland, the VOSA registrations will be submitted soon after the meeting takes place ready to become operational in late January.
It would be silly of a company to go into a customer consultation about service changes if they had nothing in mind whatsoever. As Andreos1 has correctly stated; Go North East would have devised a business plan for these service changes, including how this would benefit customers, how the fleet disposition would be affected, and how the paint plan would have to be altered accordingly. These things can take anywhere up to a period of three months to plan effectively; whilst I'm not suggesting that it has taken that amount of time on this occasion, it could well have done for all any of us know.
I don't think anyone could have correctly predicted how poor the consultation for this set of service change proposals has turned out. Whilst the majority of members on this forum have been cynical right from the start, suggesting that the company had already made up its mind with these changes, this is just not the case. The company has gone to the cost of printing posters to pin up on-board Deptford-based buses, the cost of printing feedback forms (which actually didn't seem to be handed out yesterday), and the time of allocating members of staff to spend eight hours based in Park Lane Interchange to talk with passengers. Face-to-face consultations had the potential to be massively beneficial to customers, if they were undertaken in the right way. Sadly, from what I witnessed yesterday, it does not seem that this consultation has been particularly effective. As I have already suggested - perhaps Go North East will go back to the drawing board and look for an alternative means of carrying out a consultation in future, instead of wasting time and resources which could have been spent more wisely.
I feel somewhat obliged to point out that we've seen a gradual lowering of input from Go North East employees on this forum over the past few months. I imagine that unwarranted posts which have continuously portrayed the company in a bad light have contributed to their departure from this forum. This forum was originally a great source of information for news and upcoming changes, though 'insider knowledge' is now incredibly limited. Perhaps if our relationship had not tarnished with our 'insiders' from Go North East, we could have had a clear understanding of what the company had planned, and given our views accordingly for this to potentially alter what the company had planned, but this will certainly not happen now. Whilst everyone on this forum is entitled to an opinion, and free to post their opinions on the public domain, repetitive and infelicitous posts should be avoided if it is going to make the information on this forum more and more limited. As enthusiasts, we all want to be 'kept in the loop', so I can't stress enough that I feel it's terribly important for us to not make a continuous flow of negative posts which portray the company in a bad light, and instead, make an attempt to see the good in some situations. The sun may not shine out of Go North East's exhaust pipe, but I think we all need to learn not to be blinded by our ignorance, which might enable me (and others) to stop making posts to provide the counter-argument...
Instead of hanging around bus stations, they could get out into the communities, hold public forums with the public invited along for tea and biscuits, talk with local parish councils, shit like that if it is possible, in bus station yesterday didnt seem to do much, people have somewhere to go so may not have a great deal of time to hang around and talk...
I will reserve judgment from now till I see the feedback from the consultation...
Bus companies are damned if they do, damned if they dont...
For me, I dont think I have been too critical about GNE in the past, if I believe they do something right I will say so, on the flip side, If I aint happy, again I will say so