I’ve been having an ongoing email conversation/row with Stagecoach about Heaton’s Number One bus.
To cut a long story very short, the bus which is supposed to come every 7-9 minutes was cut drastically without announcement. In fact, during correspondance they have admitted that they simply did not have enough buses to meet their advertised service.
I don’t know exactly how drastically it was cut but I waited 35 minutes for a bus - which would mean they were running a service at around only a quarter of its promised capacity. To compound this, they chose this time to put up bus fares yet again. They did this without prior warning or explanation.
Those of us who try to do the decent thing and leave our cars at home, are not being helped by woeful service. It took me an hour to get from Heaton to the City Centre yesterday. It takes ten minutes to drive it myself and 40 minutes to walk.
The Chronicle recently reported a Number One bus gone mad. I feel for the poor driver. Stagecoach make me go nuts too. I can imagine the crap the poor guy has to take from irate customers.
Anyway, therir Operations Director has offered to meet me to talk through my concerns. I know from friends living in Heaton how much the Number One bus annoys them all.
Is anyone reading this on the Number One bus route and uses it (or doesn’t use it for reasons you can relate)? Anyway want to add anything that I could bring up?
*Sidenote I’m actually moving out of Heaton in just over a month. I’ve always had something of a tie to this suburb so I am feeling quite nostalgic about it. It was the first place I lived in Newcastle 17 years ago (I’m from up the Tyne Valley originally). Anyway, good to see the Flickr Heaton photoset is swimmingly healthy at a very nearly impressive 101 photos.
* Update: I received this note which will also be added to the”moan list”
Its entirely shabby that a private company can get away with such a dismal service in what is essentially a pulic service. For what its worth xxx and I both wrote letters of complaint in around mid October, xxx’s concerned some quite wreckless driving, mine was for having to wait for over 40 minutes when they should be running at 8 an hour. We received letters saying how these issues would be looked at. Clearly nothing was done.
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April 24, 2008 at 10:54 am
minxlj
For a major part of Newcastle like Heaton, you’d think the bus service would be a little more regular!
And still they wonder why everyone feels the need to have a car!! After only 3 weeks living in Kenton, I’m feeling the pinch of relying on public transport - Stagecoach, namely. I really don’t WANT to have to have a car, for environmental reasons, but there’s only so much lateness I can put up with. Coupled with some nasty (and some downright weird) people on the buses themselves, I’m not surprised people favour their cars.
I’m pleased they’ve agreed to meet with you - here’s hoping you get some result. My dealings with bus complaints in the past have at the most been rewarded with a letter of apology, nothing more. Well done with the perseverance!
April 24, 2008 at 12:19 pm
ourmanwhere
Mnxlj - I think the thing that shocked me was that they appear to be able to advertise whatever service they want and then provide whatever service they feel like.
The fact that they promise the earth was surely what won them the contract to service that route - so how come we can’t seem to do anything about them cutting services unnanounced.
In addition, I have been advised that they are legally allowed to put up fares as they see fit without consultation and without explanation.
In short - they could cut the service to whatever they want and charge a fortune for it and we’d just have to put up with it.
Except, in the end people just jump in their cars instead - exactly the scenario that public transport is supposed to help avoid.
April 24, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Mosh
Welcome to the scenario UK-wide.
I was in London with work quite a few years ago and was getting a bus from some tube station or other out towards the M4 where my hotel was. The buses were delayed because of the flower show at Kew or something.
One woman had a real go at the driver, eventually in ending up saying words along the lines of “just get off my bus, you stupid bitch”. Which she did. And not one other passenger even batted an eyelid. Bizarre - I guess it’s common down there.
I couldn’t rely on public transport in Bradford. The last place I worked was 9.8 miles door-to-door from my house. I cycled on occasion, but usually had too much stuff to take back and forth to do it all the time so drove it (15 mins tops - 40-ish on the bike).
To get there by public transport, I had to get one bus in the opposite direction and then a train (about an hour), or one bus then another (90 mins to 2 hours) depending on time of day. And the fares were more expensive than the fuel I’d use to drive there!
April 25, 2008 at 8:34 am
ourmanwhere
Mosh, I think the point is that public transport will never be as convenient as just getting in your car. But many of us try to use it for a million reasons - from the environment to not having to worry about parking or being able to go for a beer on the way home.
However, what we have is already the absolute minimum. let’s face it - it’s not great - it’s already a relative inconvenience to use the service. My girlfriend, for example, spend nearly two and a half hours on the bus everyday just to go to the far westend of Newcastle and back. You could drive to Carlisle and back in that time.
So…with this already minimal service, once the likes of Stagecoach stop even attempting to meet it - what are we left with? A service that is absolute impossible to use without rearranging your whole life around it.
These are private companies providing a public service. I hope their shareholders are doing well out of it because we aren’t.
April 25, 2008 at 10:21 am
minxlj
I think the thing that bugs me most is public transport IS a viable alternative, it CAN be cheap and it CAN be run properly. Just visit Germany, or Denmark. I was absolutely floored by the public transport in Berlin, it was flawless, unbelievably cheap - and the network is several times the size of London. So why can’t we manage it?
I spent the last 6 years shelling out £300 a month for public transport by train from Darlington-Newcastle every day. AT LEAST 50% of the time, the trains were late, some way more than others. I got used to it, and as usual the commuters suffer. More often than not they weren’t cleaned properly, and announcements were often not even made. I put up with it as I had no other choice, but when I’m spending £300 a damn month I expect better service.
And as for the times it went majorly wrong (and there were too many of those instances) it was a complete and utter joke, such as:
• no security available when I had to have an aggressive male passenger removed after threatening me and backing me into a corner. Transport Police called at Durham, but what would have happened if he had attacked me ON the train? No apology, and the only people who offered assistance were fellow passengers. A seriously scary experience, whilst rare, it’s enough to make me want the safety of my own car.
• ending up in York TWICE because they FORGOT to change the board to show it wasn’t stopping at Darlo - lots of angry passengers, vague apology, no refund.
• taking 7 HOURS to make a 30-minute journey home after the train was stranded outside Darlo for 5 hours and forced to go onto York without being able to let people off - no explanation, no refreshments, an angry passenger having to be locked in a carriage on his own and myself including other females having to be moved away for safety (!), GNER lying about taxis being provided back home from York (by this time it was 1am) with a then frantic search for taxi drivers willing to drive people that distance at that time, and then being told to share a taxi 40 miles home with male strangers. Fucking great idea for a single female travelling alone, cheers GNER. I and others obviously refused, meaning more delays. And after all of that? A paltry offer of a refund of the £9.70 single fare. I feel sorry for the staff onboard, they have no control on what is actually going on.
Do they wonder why I started doing driving lessons after that? It’s a joke - no decent service to start with, prices way too high, and most of all no provision when things go wrong. Look at GNER’s record, or BA, or Stagecoach… they need to start picking their reputations up before anyone will trust them and ditch their cars. I’m truly embarrassed whenever I introduce a foreigner to our transport system, I really am.
April 25, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Mosh
Minx just made a point I’d happily move on to. Check out the transport in other countries. The Netherlands and Belgium are two I’ve used a fair bit in recent months. What little I experienced of Germany’s was pretty decent. Romania wasn’t bad - certainly no worse than the UK, and Poland on a par with ours as well. Of course, at a fraction of the cost.
Switzerland’s is as you’d expect. France’s is passable, but still better than ours. Australia’s varies greatly depending on where you are, but is generally pretty good.
The one thing they all have in common is that without exception as far as I can recall - every single one is cheaper than the UK equivalent.
April 26, 2008 at 3:04 pm
B
Yeah, one of my sisters lives in Germany and the service there is great. Runs to time and everything. I was talking to some Go North East members of staff recently who were saying something along the lines of ‘if one bus gets delayed in traffic and then picks up lots of passengers then even on the best run service instead of one bus every ten minutes you will get two buses at once rather than one every ten minutes’. He looked sceptical when I told him about the service in Germany where buses are rarely even a couple of minutes late. Even at peak times.
I used to get the number 1 bus in 1995-1997. It was shockingly bad then too. Over a decade later and it just seems to have got worse. Feel free to tell them that.
our buses have just been cut from 8 an hour to 4 an hour. I did realise that 8 an hour was overkill, but it had only been that way for 6 months - before that it was every 10 minutes, 6 an hour. And for godforsaken reasons, there are LESS at peak times than during the day. It’s every 20 minutes or less when I want to get to work or get home. I have written to complain (to the company, to Nexus and to the Chronicle). Noone is taking any notice. Noone else seems to be complaining either, except to each other, at the bus stop. I hate that.
Having said that, I still think Go North East is better than any other bus company in Newcastle. Still crap, but better.
I know it’s too late now, but wouldn’t it have been easier, depending on whereabouts in Heaton you are, to either walk down to the Metro (although Chilli Road Metro is depressing and I wouldn’t go there if I could avoid it) or up to the Coast Road? 308, 306, 309, 75, 76 and 58 mean that the Coast Road Service is good. 58 every 10m and also goes to John Dobson St and Pilgrim St not Haymarket like the rest.
Hope the move goes smoothly!
April 28, 2008 at 10:21 am
minxlj
So where is it you’ll be moving to? (And is the bus service any better there? Hopefully so!)
May 11, 2008 at 10:04 am
apwbATTACK
Complain to NEXUS or even higher the regional Traffic Commissioner. Every bus operator must have a licence for each route run. If they fail to meet the obligations of their licence then then commissioner can have it revoked.
This happened 2 years back in Stoke-on-Trent where First, the biggest bus operator in the country failed consistently to run adequate bus service and has like 26 of their 40odd services taken off them.
Anyway here are the contact details:
North Eastern Traffic Commissioner
Hillcrest House
386 Harehills Lane
Leeds
LS9 6NF
Tel: 0870 606 0440