(25 Nov 2014, 12:43 pm)Dan wrote It's the first time Go North East has held a face-to-face consultation instead of a faceless method (ie web-based or paper-based). As I and others have already suggested, it shouldn't have been knocked and suggested to be a bad step. I have said that I personally didn't think that the consultation yesterday was particularly effective, and I justified my reasoning behind this yesterday.
Go North East promoted its new buses very well last year, and through to the start of this year too. It shows that they do know how to grab the attention of customers. I wish some of these techniques had been adopted for yesterday's consultation, but unfortunately this was not so.
I'd assume that minimal feedback would have been gained yesterday, and this is not what senior management would have had in mind. This is why I have suggested that the company would have gone back to the drawing board to look at improving the face-to-face consultation method, or by reinstating one of the previously used more successful methods.
The section of the post regarding the loss of 'insiders' was not directly made about any one person; it was a general statement, having looked back at all of the posts made over the past few days, the fair majority of which were negative.
I have attached a photo for those who didn't get to see the set up yesterday.
The company did have the banner to attract attention - it said something like 'Give us your views', with Go North East logos and all. I'm guessing that this was not set up when you got there, judging by your post, but it was certainly there at 12:30pm.
Free pens and balloons would have been great to attract attention, and again, fits in with the idea of the company's previous events used to promote new buses being launched on services.
Look at the abundance of feedback forms that they had waiting to be filled in - I think it shows that the organisers of the consultation event certainly wanted to get a lot of feedback, but the event itself was carried out poorly...
Posts in the past have been reported on the grounds of being factually incorrect or unwarranted, which is why I have often made posts to provide the counter-argument. They too have sometimes made posts to provide a counter-argument, but as with my posts, it seems that the points contained within the posts aren't listened to, and some members of this forum continue to hold their view and disregard anything else that has been said.
Some of the comments made against all three of the North East's 'big operators' are often far from fair; indeed, I've made some in the past myself. From some members, it comes across as an attack to the company based on their negative views on other topics in the past. The suggestion I made wasn't to stop these posts altogether, but to look for the positives, too...
A public consultation is carried out once the company has drafted its ideas for proposed route changes, based on suggestions from customers and their own data showing passenger trends.
Like I said before, the company has designed its business case around its proposals, but these have to be altered in accordance with feedback gathered from the public consultation. If the majority of the feedback is negative (ie "No, I don't want this to happen."), then the company will make alternative plans based on their data and the feedback gathered. It would be silly of them to change a service when the majority of the feedback gathered was against the plans.
Thursday's meeting with senior management, local councillors and Nexus will be when things are confirmed (either to proceed and register the new services, or to change a few of them slightly to meet the needs of local councillors).
Remember this applies to the T&W Metro
