(05 Oct 2021, 8:54 am)Dan wrote I’m not sure I’ve seen any of the alleged ‘arrogance’ that is being mooted here? Could you provide some examples, please?

You could argue that there’s been some mutual back-patting among operators within the NEbus group, showing how brilliantly things can work with better collaboration, but I’m not sure this has ever stemmed into ‘arrogance’ as you claim.

As enthusiasts on this forum, we have seen a lot of criticism of Gateshead Central Taxis, who have had a staff shortage that long pre-dated the current national labour shortage. We, as enthusiasts and indeed as customers too (in some cases), were critical of this, and recognised that customers deserved better.

We’re seeing similar levels of criticism for Go North East now - some of it justified, perhaps not all. Peter quite succinctly made that point above.


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You mean you've not heard any comments from colleagues or seen any comments or emails about these other operators?
Howay man Dan. I thought a guy like yourself would have his finger on the button and know exactly what is being said and who has been saying it. 

GCT did have a shortage. High staff sickness levels and people leaving due to poor management/low wages allegedly.
All during a pandemic. 
I'm not sure the issues are unique or exclusive to them either.
Maybe their lack of back office staff or a smaller engineering base, allowed it to come to the fore prior to a larger organisation who had people performing roles different to the one they normally carry out? Like engineers driving on a weekend or commercial team members out on an evening.

We all know the industry has had traditionally high attrition levels. It has done for years. 
You just need to look at the driver training fleet, open days and recruitment events held by GNE. If attrition was low - it could be argued that those events wouldn't be needed and the training fleet wouldn't be as hard pushed as they have been.

(05 Oct 2021, 9:21 am)Andreos1 wrote We all know the industry has had traditionally high attrition levels. It has done for years. 
You just need to look at the driver training fleet, open days and recruitment events held by GNE. If attrition was low - it could be argued that those events wouldn't be needed and the training fleet wouldn't be as hard pushed as they have been.

It has, and whilst other industries have also suffered, it never seems to be as bad as bus drivers. Whether that be down to pay, conditions or culture (or even a mixture of all three)

Another problem is the race to the bottom culture when bidding for public contracts. This isn't unique to transport operators, but the idea of most economically advantageous bids, leads businesses to reducing costs as much as possible in their bid for the work. The biggest cost is always going to be staff, which is why we've probably seen things like low-cost units develop, in order to 'remain competitive' to win contracts. The downside of that of course, is that you end up creating a multi-tier workforce as a result, where workers doing the same job are paid different rates of pay. The only way you'll really solve this is if sectoral collective bargaining is used, as it is in other parts of Europe.

“Student brands Go North East a 'waste of time' following weeks of delays”:

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/nor...ssion=true

(12 Oct 2021, 9:25 am)ne14ne1 wrote “Student brands Go North East a 'waste of time' following weeks of delays”:

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/nor...ssion=true

There's nothing that can be done. There's a shortage. Didn't see this much complain when Arriva had shortage back in February/March. You try to tell people There's gonna be cancellation to service and look what happens. Your (the bus company) made out to be the bad person

(12 Oct 2021, 9:41 am)Train8261 wrote There's nothing that can be done. There's a shortage. Didn't see this much complain when Arriva had shortage back in February/March. You try to tell people There's gonna be cancellation to service and look what happens. Your (the bus company) made out to be the bad person

Poor management, low pay, naff conditions and an industry which has traditionally had high turnover. 
Nobody could have predicted the pandemic, but they could have done so much more to ensure that staff turnover was lower prior to it and that drivers didn't move on.

Remember, this is an industry which is down sizing on a regular basis. Routes are consolidated, fleets are made smaller - but recruitment events are held, training fleets are out on the road and pushed to the limits. Those recruitment and events and training fleets wouldn't need to exist if the staff turnover was low.

Operators have been caught with their pants down during the pandemic and haven't been able to stem the usual flow of leavers, with new recruits.
It's as simple as that.

(12 Oct 2021, 10:03 am)Andreos1 wrote Poor management, low pay, naff conditions and an industry which has traditionally had high turnover. 
Nobody could have predicted the pandemic, but they could have done so much more to ensure that staff turnover was lower prior to it and that drivers didn't move on.

Remember, this is an industry which is down sizing on a regular basis. Routes are consolidated, fleets are made smaller - but recruitment events are held, training fleets are out on the road and pushed to the limits. Those recruitment and events and training fleets wouldn't need to exist if the staff turnover was low.

Operators have been caught with their pants down during the pandemic and haven't been able to stem the usual flow of leavers, with new recruits.
It's as simple as that.

But the public don't seem to understand. They want it handed to them on a silver plate. I swear half of them have ethier forgotten or just breeze past that we had a pandemic

(12 Oct 2021, 10:03 am)Andreos1 wrote Poor management, low pay, naff conditions and an industry which has traditionally had high turnover. 
Nobody could have predicted the pandemic, but they could have done so much more to ensure that staff turnover was lower prior to it and that drivers didn't move on.

Remember, this is an industry which is down sizing on a regular basis. Routes are consolidated, fleets are made smaller - but recruitment events are held, training fleets are out on the road and pushed to the limits. Those recruitment and events and training fleets wouldn't need to exist if the staff turnover was low.

Operators have been caught with their pants down during the pandemic and haven't been able to stem the usual flow of leavers, with new recruits.
It's as simple as that.

Exactly this. Its disingenuous to solely blame Brexit and Covid. They are factors yes, but by far the biggest factor is the staff retention issue right across the industry.

As you say, this is completely within the industry's control, and collectively this should have been addressed years ago.

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(12 Oct 2021, 10:09 am)Train8261 wrote But the public don't seem to understand. They want it handed to them on a silver plate. I swear half of them have ethier forgotten or just breeze past that we had a pandemic

They want the service advertised and that they're paying. That's not expecting it 'handed to them on a silver plate'

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(12 Oct 2021, 10:13 am)Adrian wrote They want the service advertised and that they're paying. That's not expecting it 'handed to them on a silver plate'

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I'm saying there's people out there still complaining about it even when there given days notice. The fact is the public don't understand how bad its hit business. How many complaining did you see to Arriva when they were hit with driver shortages. Go North East are at least telling people there's gonna be service cancellations. Is any other services doing this. (Possibly not thay I've seen) yet go North East are hit with complain left right and centre.

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I mean Go North East this year alone have been hit by the media a ton of times. (Pay to drivers, Cancel of service, Service changes) you name it

(12 Oct 2021, 10:18 am)Train8261 wrote I'm saying there's people out there still complaining about it even when there given days notice. The fact is the public don't understand how bad its hit business. How many complaining did you see to Arriva when they were hit with driver shortages. Go North East are at least telling people there's gonna be service cancellations. Is any other services doing this. (Possibly not thay I've seen) yet go North East are hit with complain left right and centre.

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I mean Go North East this year alone have been hit by the media a ton of times. (Pay to drivers, Cancel of service, Service changes) you name it

Its not about one single operator. Its the industry as a whole, as I've said in my post.

You don't need to turn it into a competition (or more appropriately, a race to the bottom), every time someone questions the approach of your favourite operator.

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The biggest issues are the staff turnovers and not being able to replace them fast enough due to issues with the DVLA taking ages to process anything, know people who are waiting about 5 months just to take a car driving test!

The reason there was less complaints to Arriva when they had shortages back in February/March was because most of us were being ordered to stay at home (lockdown) and to combat some of the burden Go North East & Stanley Travel were brought in to cover most runs on the 46 & 51/51A.

I don't think it's wrong at all for passengers to be complaining about their service not being provided and this is not specific to one operator, was in Middlesbrough Bus Station on Saturday afternoon and the queue for the Stagecoach 36/37/38 which had gaps in service was a mile long with some instead opting for Arriva's X12/X22/X66/X67 to reach Stockton.

Lack of communication is another issue, Arriva in particular give you little to no indication as to if anything is cancelled, Go North East took quite a while to think to give an advance list of cancellations for the following day to plan around the disruption (the Twitter cancellation posts are little help in that regard, typically just confirms your suspicions when a bus hasn't turned up).

With all this in mind it's little wonder customers are absolutely cheesed off, the fact companies are now putting out messages to be kind to drivers paints a picture on the ground to the mood as to how customers are feeling about the service being provided.

"With all this in mind it's little wonder customers are absolutely cheesed off, the fact companies are now putting out messages to be kind to drivers paints a picture on the ground to the mood as to how customers are feeling about the service being provided."

And with that in mind it's no wonder drivers are cheesed off too with all the abuse they get through no fault of their own. I am delighted to say that I am retired from bus industry now! Two friends of mine have just resigned from GNE and they had 39 years service between them, this is an appalling indictment.

(12 Oct 2021, 10:18 am)Train8261 wrote I'm saying there's people out there still complaining about it even when there given days notice. The fact is the public don't understand how bad its hit business. How many complaining did you see to Arriva when they were hit with driver shortages. Go North East are at least telling people there's gonna be service cancellations. Is any other services doing this. (Possibly not thay I've seen) yet go North East are hit with complain left right and centre.

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I mean Go North East this year alone have been hit by the media a ton of times. (Pay to drivers, Cancel of service, Service changes) you name it

There was at least one entire thread dedicated to Arriva's issues last year when they were hit particularly badly, but don't let that get in the way of your obsession of putting down other operators every time GNE have any criticism aimed towards them. 

I didn't realise there was a quota of how many times an operator can appear in the press... I also like how you've completely skipped over all the positive coverage they've had. 

Just on your point on criticism about service changes - we've seen how it works directly with another operator (I won't mention them by name as I don't think you can cope with them having anything positive said about them) who have recently held their hands up and admitted to messing up a route and have acted to revert back to pre-Covid service in response to criticism.

(12 Oct 2021, 10:18 am)Train8261 wrote I'm saying there's people out there still complaining about it even when there given days notice. The fact is the public don't understand how bad its hit business. How many complaining did you see to Arriva when they were hit with driver shortages. Go North East are at least telling people there's gonna be service cancellations. Is any other services doing this. (Possibly not thay I've seen) yet go North East are hit with complain left right and centre.

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I mean Go North East this year alone have been hit by the media a ton of times. (Pay to drivers, Cancel of service, Service changes) you name it

Not trying to be funny but GNE deserve criticism for some of the cancellations today. It's all good putting posts out but when they're complete stupid decisions then they deserve it.

The 17:35 and 18:05 X5/X15 being the stand out silly cancellations. It's all good saying look online and having time but if I worked 9.15am - 5.15pm I'd be extremely pissed off that the next to Lanchester is 19:05 or if I'm going direct to Shotley Bridge there isn't a service at all.

I'd be well in truly complaining and if I could drive I'd be straight in the car the day after. I feel sorry for whoever has to drive 19:05 bus. Yet the X45/X46 and 16/16A has barely any cancellations when they're every 15/30 minutes. That's poor planning imo.

Special mention for the 23:00 X1 and 19:40 47A for being cancelled being the last buses of the night again aswell for part of the route.

(12 Oct 2021, 10:09 am)Train8261 wrote But the public don't seem to understand. They want it handed to them on a silver plate. I swear half of them have ethier forgotten or just breeze past that we had a pandemic

Do they need or want to understand why their bus doesn't turn up?
If the answer is yes, then the operators need to (at the very least) maintain the levels of communication they have opened up and need to be honest about why their buses aren't running. Not just part truths or convenient sound bites. The whole thing. Brexit, Covid and shite *management/working conditions/pay etc

*delete as appropriate.

Seems a bit of a pathetic, over-egged example for the media to have latached onto. The girl's bus was 19 minutes late in the morning peak. Hardly unheard of, even without pandemic, for peak services to experience delays like this. Maybe if they made the headline "Bus 19 mins late" it would be clearer what a non-news story this is, other than for this individual.

That's not to say there isn't an issue; just lazy reporting by the Chronicle picking such a weak example rather than highlighting any of the many examples of consecutive journey cancellations or of last runs not operating (this far into the crisis, there should be management action in place to prevent both such occurrences).

(12 Oct 2021, 5:28 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote Seems a bit of a pathetic, over-egged example for the media to have latached onto.  The girl's bus was 19 minutes late in the morning peak.  Hardly unheard of, even without pandemic, for peak services to experience delays like this.  Maybe if they made the headline "Bus 19 mins late" it would be clearer what a non-news story this is, other than for this individual.

That's not to say there isn't an issue; just lazy reporting by the Chronicle picking such a weak example rather than highlighting any of the many examples of consecutive journey cancellations or of last runs not operating (this far into the crisis, there should be management action in place to prevent both such occurrences).

Lazy reporting by The Chronicle... I've never heard such nonsense!

She should think herself lucky having a bus turn up 19 minutes late as opposed to not running at all!

I read that article, and I don't have the words to sum up the idiocy, ignorant factors.

(12 Oct 2021, 5:56 pm)Keeiajs wrote I read that article, and I don't have the words to sum up the idiocy, ignorant factors.

I don't agree. The customer has every right complain if the service is not being provided. You only have to pass through the Galleries during the day to see the numbers of buses parked up there. It's not good!

(12 Oct 2021, 7:09 pm)DeltaMan wrote I don't agree. The customer has every right complain if the service is not being provided. You only have to pass through the Galleries during the day to see the numbers of buses parked up there. It's not good!

Yeah everyone has the right to complain, but it is ignorance not looking at the website I understand Arriva/SC when they don't tell you the services. But when they are on the website, and for a bus to be late through peak times is not common especially with the 50 going on the A19 during rush hour aswell. GNE offer somewhere to look to see your services, and the ignorance in this current climate with DVLA.

If you really want picture of how bad this situation actually is, I seen 5 Angel Streetdecks parked up in Eldon Square at 8am this morning 2 of which were in service on an inbound and outbound journey with other 3 not in service having run light from the depot into Newcastle to start service from there as past me on my way into town from Low Fell. 

For the length time some of those vehicles sat there you could potentially of operated 3 journeys from Chester-Le-Street to Newcastle and what is more interesting the fact these journey's from starting from Newcastle this morning were not even documented on journey cancellation page on the Go North East website, infact there was no documented cancellations at all for the 21 today so what happened one wonders.

(12 Oct 2021, 11:06 am)Storx wrote Not trying to be funny but GNE deserve criticism for some of the cancellations today. It's all good putting posts out but when they're complete stupid decisions then they deserve it.

The 17:35 and 18:05 X5/X15 being the stand out silly cancellations. It's all good saying look online and having time but if I worked 9.15am - 5.15pm I'd be extremely pissed off that the next to Lanchester is 19:05 or if I'm going direct to Shotley Bridge there isn't a service at all.

I'd be well in truly complaining and if I could drive I'd be straight in the car the day after. I feel sorry for whoever has to drive 19:05 bus. Yet the X45/X46 and 16/16A has barely any cancellations when they're every 15/30 minutes. That's poor planning imo.

Special mention for the 23:00 X1 and 19:40 47A for being cancelled being the last buses of the night again aswell for part of the route.

Cancelling last buses should be an absolute no no with passengers either given alternative means or common section of route covered by another service with unique parts picked up further down the line.

(12 Oct 2021, 11:56 pm)L469 YVK wrote Cancelling last buses should be an absolute no no with passengers either given alternative means or common section of route covered by another service with unique parts picked up further down the line.

Why is it that they seem to be happy to divert the X9/X10 to cover both routes if one gets cancelled, but not any other route?

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I've said before and I will say it again. First buses through to 10amish and from 4pm to last buses should run fully 100%. During the day cut down on high frequency routes but not routes that run every 30 mins.

Should last bus be cut a taxi should be provided.

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Mind the article was right about one thing - no competition so can charge what they like etc.

(13 Oct 2021, 6:52 am)streetdeckfan wrote Why is it that they seem to be happy to divert the X9/X10 to cover both routes if one gets cancelled, but not any other route?

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I'd have thought that it's because operationally it's the easiest route to do that on out of all the services GNE run. They can probably divert the route to cover both the x9 and X10 stops and still stay pretty much to timetable, which I'm not sure they'd be able to do on other services.

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Possible to do with the (I think) X9/X10 are the only routes that follow the exact same route but come of at different points.

The X10 covers the X9 route on evening and Sundays anyway so it's easier for GNE to withdraw the X9 (if needed) and shove the X10 to serve both routes.

I can't say the same thing for different routes. Maybe the 12/12A

GNE should be praised for the way they are not just putting these daily lists online but are printing them out and displaying them at the various bus stations, and not just at the main ones, there were even lists stuck up today in Hexham and Consett Bus Stations

(14 Oct 2021, 9:31 pm)Wybus wrote GNE should be praised for the way they are not just putting these daily lists online but are printing them out and displaying them at the various bus stations, and not just at the main ones, there were even lists stuck up today in Hexham and Consett Bus Stations

It's a lot better than what I've seen elsewhere, but it's a shame that the app still advertises services on that list as scheduled, instead of removing them altogether. If the operator doesn't have the option to mark trips as cancelled on the app, then there's a technical enhancement required to ensure it's possible.

Same goes with the digital passenger information displays at bus stations. Cancelled trips should be shown as such, so that people can make alternative arrangements.

There's also the matter of information listed on the website being kept up to date and accurate; e.g. the 21.33 Connections 4 was listed as cancelled from Heworth last night, yet it actually ran and it was the 21.53 that was cancelled.

(14 Oct 2021, 9:31 pm)Wybus wrote GNE should be praised for the way they are not just putting these daily lists online but are printing them out and displaying them at the various bus stations, and not just at the main ones, there were even lists stuck up today in Hexham and Consett Bus Stations

And Arriva are barely getting any stick, just their buses don't show up nothing else.

(14 Oct 2021, 10:44 pm)Keeiajs wrote And Arriva are barely getting any stick, just their buses don't show up nothing else.

Arriva show cancellation and delays in real time on the app, often a few hours in advance which is very handy. And, for me, preferable over the list of services that GNE have as I often go out on a whim and can't be arsed to search the website for the list

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