(18 May 2022, 8:34 pm)Andreos1 wrote This excuse? 

Makes my imaginary PR release about sledges and car sharing in another thread look even more genuine than I anticipated!

That is pathetic....

(18 May 2022, 8:54 pm)Storx wrote Runs with the theme, there's nothing wrong with GNE, it's always someone else's fault. Similar with Covid being the main cause for less people using their buses, totally nothing to do with the fact half the buses aren't running.

Not the first time they've used a football match as an excuse for cancellations, they cited "an outbreak of football fever" when an England match during Euro 2020 last year happened to fall on a Saturday when they were short staffed on the day. Interested to see what spin they would take should the same were to occur next Saturday?

Next I'm sure we can look forward to evening services not running because of people being excited for the Great British Bake Off final.

Nobody can deny this is a kick in the teeth for customers and it is poor, but is it better that there are short-notice cancellations the day before/on the day, or planned frequency reductions in advance? Those are the two options here, because covering every single journey clearly isn’t an option right now.

Perhaps I am being cynical but if drivers are scheduled to work and they are avid football fans, it could well result in a large number of failures on the day. Maybe this is planning to fail or perhaps it’s being realistic and knowing that this couldn’t be absorbed on the day on a Saturday service?

I wonder if they would have had the same backlash, or less, if they chose to ran a Saturday service with cancellations as normal? Presumably this enhanced Sunday service will result in every journey being operated with no cancellations.

Speaking from a personal point of view as someone who lives in Sunderland, most of my friends (and their families) are all heading down to watch the football on Saturday. It feels like I’m going to be in the minority as someone staying in the city this weekend…

I am told 14 buses were missing at various parts of today at Arriva Durham (far greater than Go North East’s missing journeys from one depot today). Absolutely nothing said by Arriva about this, in print or online. As a result, absolutely nothing said on this forum about it. I have said it before and will say it again, but Go North East’s honesty results in them getting a lot of backlash. Some of the comments are warranted, but some just pick fault…


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(18 May 2022, 9:37 pm)Dan wrote Nobody can deny this is a kick in the teeth for customers and it is poor, but is it better that there are short-notice cancellations the day before/on the day, or planned frequency reductions in advance? Those are the two options here, because covering every single journey clearly isn’t an option right now.

Perhaps I am being cynical but if drivers are scheduled to work and they are avid football fans, it could well result in a large number of failures on the day. Maybe this is planning to fail or perhaps it’s being realistic and knowing that this couldn’t be absorbed on the day on a Saturday service?

I wonder if they would have had the same backlash, or less, if they chose to ran a Saturday service with cancellations as normal? Presumably this enhanced Sunday service will result in every journey being operated with no cancellations.

Would there be staffing levels above a normal Sunday service in place to account for any disruption? Sunday services are obviously timed etc. for Sunday traffic and patronage and seem to go very bad very quickly when faced with more than that.

Taking the potential disruption into account, there's the possibility of dropping below even a Sunday service level (i.e not every journey being operated, and there being cancellations) if there isn't staffing resource available to address late running without having to regulate services to comply with driving time regulations etc.

(18 May 2022, 9:37 pm)Dan wrote I am told 14 buses were missing at various parts of today at Arriva Durham (far greater than Go North East’s missing journeys from one depot today). Absolutely nothing said by Arriva about this, in print or online. As a result, absolutely nothing said on this forum about it. I have said it before and will say it again, but Go North East’s honesty results in them getting a lot of backlash. Some of the comments are warranted, but some just pick fault…


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I agree I think GNE have done the best of the three major operators in,informing passengers which ones have been cancelled upto basically the last minute

Rather than SC some journeys won't operate

(18 May 2022, 8:34 pm)Andreos1 wrote This excuse? 

Makes my imaginary PR release about sledges and car sharing in another thread look even more genuine than I anticipated!

I'm half expecting the next one to start "Due to the day ending in a Y, we're helping you out by cancelling peak time services and making you wait around on for ages on a Saturday."

I wonder what other sporting events qualify for a Sunday service?

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(18 May 2022, 10:08 pm)Adrian wrote I wonder what other sporting events qualify for a Sunday service?

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Can just about imagine the press release if the Olympics/World Cup were being held in the UK anytime soon... "Due to everyone sitting on their sofa, all our buses have been parked up for the next 4 weeks - *link to Flexility*".

(18 May 2022, 9:37 pm)Dan wrote Nobody can deny this is a kick in the teeth for customers and it is poor, but is it better that there are short-notice cancellations the day before/on the day, or planned frequency reductions in advance? Those are the two options here, because covering every single journey clearly isn’t an option right now.

Perhaps I am being cynical but if drivers are scheduled to work and they are avid football fans, it could well result in a large number of failures on the day. Maybe this is planning to fail or perhaps it’s being realistic and knowing that this couldn’t be absorbed on the day on a Saturday service?

I wonder if they would have had the same backlash, or less, if they chose to ran a Saturday service with cancellations as normal? Presumably this enhanced Sunday service will result in every journey being operated with no cancellations.

Speaking from a personal point of view as someone who lives in Sunderland, most of my friends (and their families) are all heading down to watch the football on Saturday. It feels like I’m going to be in the minority as someone staying in the city this weekend…

I am told 14 buses were missing at various parts of today at Arriva Durham (far greater than Go North East’s missing journeys from one depot today). Absolutely nothing said by Arriva about this, in print or online. As a result, absolutely nothing said on this forum about it. I have said it before and will say it again, but Go North East’s honesty results in them getting a lot of backlash. Some of the comments are warranted, but some just pick fault…


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Except it's not an especially honest description of the situation to claim "To help with this" - who is it helping?  It implies this is a choice GNE are making because of expected low passenger numbers, making it not worth them running the scheduled timetable - which I think would be in breech of the TC Regs - whereas this is actually because GNE appear to be unable to trust their own staff to turn up to work.

As for the more general point about the whole city emptying leaving only a minority in the region, it's probably worth bearing in mind, Sunderland have been allocated a little over 46,000 tickets.  Ignoring the fact that a good chunk of these will not even live in Sunderland, that does still leave well over 230,000 (of over 80%) of the population not uprooting to London for the day.

Let's hope Sunderland never return to the heady days of filling the SoL or, with similar numbers of punters tied up for a couple of hours than we are talking about heading down to Wembley, presumably GNE would switch to a Sunday service every second Saturday afternoon.

It is just, as others have rightly said, a really poor attempt to polish a pretty massive turd.

(18 May 2022, 10:38 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote Except it's not an especially honest description of the situation to claim "To help with this" - who is it helping?  It implies this is a choice GNE are making because of expected low passenger numbers, making it not worth them running the scheduled timetable - which I think would be in breech of the TC Regs - whereas this is actually because GNE appear to be unable to trust their own staff to turn up to work.

As for the more general point about the whole city emptying leaving only a minority in the region, it's probably worth bearing in mind, Sunderland have been allocated a little over 46,000 tickets.  Ignoring the fact that a good chunk of these will not even live in Sunderland, that does still leave well over 230,000 (of over 80%) of the population not uprooting to London for the day.

Let's hope Sunderland never return to the heady days of filling the SoL or, with similar numbers of punters tied up for a couple of hours than we are talking about heading down to Wembley, presumably GNE would switch to a Sunday service every second Saturday afternoon.

It is just, as others have rightly said, a really poor attempt to polish a pretty massive turd.

I think they need to look at Friday and Mondays services too.
I'm aware of some people going down the day before and making a weekend of it. Not coming back until Monday!

Wow at that press release, we’ve reached The Thick Of It levels of satire here,

(18 May 2022, 8:54 pm)Storx wrote Runs with the theme, there's nothing wrong with GNE, it's always someone else's fault. Similar with Covid being the main cause for less people using their buses, totally nothing to do with the fact half the buses aren't running.

The 'Dependable' services bit is amusing, that and the assumption half the town can actually afford to go to Wembley. There's a few coaches going, but somehow I doubt that would impact on the numbers doing their usual shop.. 2s will be rammed, brilliant in muggy maskless weather..

Say whatever u want. But this is the most pathetic line ever produced on a gne page ever

As tens of thousands of Sunderland fans head to Wembley this Saturday (21 May) for the League One Play-Off Final, Go North East is expecting to carry considerably lower numbers of passengers across Wearside.

(19 May 2022, 10:38 am)Aaron21 wrote Say whatever u want. But this is the most pathetic line ever produced on a gne page ever

As tens of thousands of Sunderland fans head to Wembley this Saturday (21 May) for the League One Play-Off Final, Go North East is expecting to carry considerably lower numbers of passengers across Wearside.

They will know already how many drivers they are short, are off sick and have said they don’t want to work their days off - in some ways it’s sensible what they have done.

(19 May 2022, 12:55 pm)busmanT wrote They will know already how many drivers they are short, are off sick and have said they don’t want to work their days off - in some ways it’s sensible what they have done.

I don't think anyone really has a problem with what they're doing, it's the complete bull that they've come out with to justify it.

I'm pretty sure if they'd just come out and said "due to staffing issues we will be running to Sunday timetables", there may have been a few complaints and it would have went away!

(19 May 2022, 10:38 am)Aaron21 wrote Say whatever u want. But this is the most pathetic line ever produced on a gne page ever

As tens of thousands of Sunderland fans head to Wembley this Saturday (21 May) for the League One Play-Off Final, Go North East is expecting to carry considerably lower numbers of passengers across Wearside.

The line doesn't seem to have gone down too well with the general public who are now questioning as to why they're all being inconvinced by a football match... At a time when people are tired of hearing excuses for poor service (not just at GNE) it does feel like they've scored a bit of an own goal here (pun somewhat intended [emoji6])

(19 May 2022, 1:07 pm)streetdeckfan wrote I don't think anyone really has a problem with what they're doing, it's the complete bull that they've come out with to justify it.

I'm pretty sure if they'd just come out and said "due to staffing issues we will be running to Sunday timetables", there may have been a few complaints and it would have went away!

And they could've used it as a way to plug their vacancies.

"On Saturday, we'll be running an enhanced Sunday timetable due to driver shortages. If you want to help drive us to a green future and help bust congestion*, then apply to be a bus driver with us here: (link)"

*We'll ignore the fact it took buses about 20 minutes to get from the Colliery Inn at Murton to Dalton Park yesterday because of loads of traffic and a lane being blocked.

GNE's customer service responses and general marketing has been utterly woeful of late. I've no idea if they've an agency or new management in but its getting as bad as it was during the dark 'Facebook invasion' days.

(19 May 2022, 1:18 pm)Jimmi wrote The line doesn't seem to have gone down too well with the general public who are now questioning as to why they're all being inconvinced by a football match... At a time when people are tired of hearing excuses for poor service (not just at GNE) it does feel like they've scored a bit of an own goal here (pun somewhat intended [emoji6])

There's people laughing at them on social media. There's people laughing at them in the street.

But there's still gonna be some back patting from the fan boys and girls.
Embarrassing.

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(19 May 2022, 2:39 pm)Ambassador wrote GNE's customer service responses and general marketing has been utterly woeful of late. I've no idea if they've an agency or new management in but its getting as bad as it was during the dark 'Facebook invasion' days.

Bring back those characters!

Imagine when the toon win the premier league and get to the champions league final.... no arriva stagecoach gne or gateshead central running... at all..... for 4 weeks. Plus no fire brigade police or hospitals open.... cause all the staff want to go to the final!!!

(19 May 2022, 2:56 pm)Rob44 wrote Imagine when the toon win the premier league and get to the champions league final.... no arriva stagecoach gne or gateshead central running... at all..... for 4 weeks. Plus no fire brigade police or hospitals open.... cause all the staff want to go to the final!!!

That's the way GNE are going about it. The line that I mentioned above is pathetic. It goes to show Go North East don't care about the passengers anymore. No other companies have done this

Stagecoach haven't put out a tweet saying. Oh were running buses to a different timetable due to a final. What about all pubs in Sunderland that will play the match on tv

(19 May 2022, 1:38 pm)F114TML wrote And they could've used it as a way to plug their vacancies.

"On Saturday, we'll be running an enhanced Sunday timetable due to driver shortages. If you want to help drive us to a green future and help bust congestion*, then apply to be a bus driver with us here: (link)"

*We'll ignore the fact it took buses about 20 minutes to get from the Colliery Inn at Murton to Dalton Park yesterday because of loads of traffic and a lane being blocked.

To say there is a enhanced Sunday timetable running on a Saturday is a bit of a joke. When there are no enhancements except a few services are running normal Saturday services.

And also there might be 46K going down but howmany travel by bus full stop, probs no more than 10K (and that is a stretch)

(19 May 2022, 3:08 pm)Aaron21 wrote That's the way GNE are going about it. The line that I mentioned above is pathetic. It goes to show Go North East don't care about the passengers anymore. No other companies have done this

Stagecoach haven't put out a tweet saying. Oh were running buses to a different timetable due to a final. What about all pubs in Sunderland that will play the match on tv

Stagecoach don’t have a staff shortage in Sunderland. That’s the difference. They are only under pressure in Newcastle due to the 317 service contract award and return of the 100.


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(19 May 2022, 3:16 pm)Dan wrote Stagecoach don’t have a staff shortage in Sunderland. That’s the difference. They are only under pressure in Newcastle due to the 317 service contract award and return of the 100.


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GNE won't be under pressure for long. Also there has been barely any sunderland cancellations recently.

The fact that a competent professional in a well paid role signed it off is the biggest worry.

It shows how utterly out of touch some of the management are

(19 May 2022, 3:18 pm)Unber43 wrote GNE won't be under pressure for long. Also there has been barely any sunderland cancellations recently.

Because the way they're going, they won't even exist in a few years.

Seems as though 'everyone' is going down to Wembley I doubt we will see many full buses or close to full.

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(19 May 2022, 3:55 pm)Ambassador wrote The fact that a competent professional in a well paid role signed it off is the biggest worry.

It shows how utterly out of touch some of the management are

Its not just that, its the fact this is the 2nd or 3rd major services changes to get the future ready. 

Thats bad management - honestly I will always pick GNE over SC & Arriva - I think there are better however all these changes are a bit of a joke, how can people trust a bus company when they are going to withdraw like 15 routes in once.

(19 May 2022, 3:55 pm)Ambassador wrote The fact that *someone* in a well paid role signed it off is the biggest worry.

It shows how utterly out of touch some of the management are

Fixed it for you.

Professional and competent? Not sure that description works for whoever signed that one off.

(19 May 2022, 6:17 pm)Andreos1 wrote Fixed it for you.

Professional and competent? Not sure that description works for whoever signed that one off.

I see there's an enthusiast been busy on the GNE facebook page, picking a fight with any customers posting negative sentiments with regard to the reduced operations planned for Saturday.

(19 May 2022, 8:09 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote I see there's an enthusiast been busy on the GNE facebook page, picking a fight with any customers posting negative sentiments with regard to the reduced operations planned for Saturday.

They'd be banned instantly if I was running it. Some sad sad people around but then that's Facebook pretty much in general.

I see the mass exodus from Sunderland has began.
Getting all sorts of images and videos on my social media of fans heading off to London.
It will be interesting to see the huge impact on services today.