Member Article

Go North East pledges to add extra capacity when buses get full as the region returns to school and work

As more people start returning to work, school and college, the region’s buses are starting to fill up a little more, but Go North East is here to keep you moving and there is still plenty of capacity in the system.

A small number of buses are now starting to be considered ‘full’ at busy times due to social distancing, though the region’s largest bus operator is putting extra measures in place to ensure you can still get from A to B.

Go North East is running over 50 extra buses and duplicate journeys, whilst monitoring loadings and capacities and adjusting its resources daily. This means that if a bus does turn up with a ‘bus full’ sign, you can be assured that there will be another one soon behind it to keep you moving.

The region’s bus operators are also continuing to work together through the NEbus initiative to accept each other’s tickets on common sections of routes. Go North East has additionally introduced tools to boost customer confidence, allowing them to see how busy their bus is going to be.

The first, ‘When2Travel’, is a dynamic prediction engine that forecasts which journeys will be quieter, or busier, when and where, whilst capacities are restricted, allowing customers to choose what time of travel works best for them.

Then on the day of travel, customers can additionally use the company’s ‘how many seats’ feature to check live data whilst at the bus stop or waiting to set off from home, to see how many seats are left on their bus in real-time.

The feature also shows if the bus is going to be a single or double-deck bus and what colour it is, so you know which bus to look out for.

Go North East’s managing director, Martijn Gilbert, said: “We know people are starting to return to school and their workplaces, so we want to reassure our customers that we’re doing everything we can to keep everyone on the move.

“We’re running over 50 extra buses across the region, whilst monitoring journeys daily so we can make adjustments and improvements, to make sure if a bus is ‘full’ then another will be along shortly afterwards and we log such instances so we can plan additional resources, wherever possible, going forward.

“At busy times there will be occasions when buses are declared full. Customers are asked to leave extra time for this, but also be assured that we will get them to their destination and that the bulk of buses have more than enough room and there is still plenty of capacity across the day for people to return to using our clean, safe and green transport network.

“If you’re catching the bus and your travel times are flexible, please plan ahead using our sophisticated bus checker tools.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Go North East .