(09 Dec 2014, 7:53 pm)northern156 wrote Granted this was witnessed on several occasions on busy Saturdays (a couple of which in the Christmas shopping rush), but does anyone know how the absolute chaos in Eldon Square could be remedied?
On numerous times I've seen all stands just go into disarray; the last time was Saturday - I'd imagine it starts with a delay on one service which leads to it missing its stand which then leads to others going into different stands etc. - I have no doubt people have missed their services due to it; even with the poor Nexus chap who goes round announcing to all passengers where their bus is! Also considering there's only the one lane for buses to travel along the bus station it adds to the chaos. The other day two X1s turned up, one behind the other. There were 3 separate queues at Stand B, but the first service went into Stand E with the second offloading its passengers at the drop-off bay before going to Stand B. The following service picked up no passengers (despite standing there for 5 minutes) but the first one eventually made it up to B, loaded and was delayed even more getting out of the place!
It's a difficult one.
I guess there will be occasions when buses needed to use different stands, or ultimately, the problem would be 10x worse, with buses backed up all the way on to Percy Street. Quite often though, you do see GNE buses go straight out the bus station and back round, after dropping passengers off at the set down stand. Two X1s trying to pick up at the same time is an operational issue though. I guess I'd like to see one of them be told to go NIS to Gateshead, and start picking up passengers from there. It should at least remove the gap in service to some degree.
If you want chaos, you should try Durham bus station. There are 11 stands - GNE have 4 stands (B, C, G and L), and Arriva have 6 (D, E, F, H, J, and K). It's not uncommon for Arriva drivers to just pull in the stand, take their cash, and clear off. Leaving the bus in the stand blocking a scheduled service from using it, forcing it onto another stand (usually one of the 4 GNE stands).