Thursday 3 December 2015

Rapid response bus stop team

It's not normally my style to name and shame fellow operators publicly, but as I was giving Cardiff Bus and NAT what I hope were largely positive reviews of their services - and they both appear to be doing a good job, let's be clear about that - I didn't feel bad about giving them each a gentle poke in the ribs for one or two things that were not as good as they could be.  But they could have taken exception to my comments.

All credit therefore to Gareth Stevens of Cardiff Bus for a very positive response.  Within 24 hours of my post, he had scrambled the Cardiff Bus rapid response bus stop maintenance team.  The unsightly bus stop flag that I had spotted on my travels was immediately replaced, and here's the evidence:  (Apologies for the poor quality of the photo, which my phone appears to have mangled somewhere during the process)

 
Twelve years have passed since I left the South Wales bus scene, but it's nice to know I can still wield some little influence.  I'm sure the good citizens of Cardiff will be holding street parties to celebrate my efforts on their behalf.  But of course the credit goes to Gareth and his team - it's much appreciated guys!

5 comments:

  1. So once again action is only taken when someone who can " wield some little influence" spots it.
    Gareth should have his team out spotting these things as part of running a company and not have them brought to his attention.
    It would be interesting to know if this bus stop had been reported before by
    a "ordinary" passenger without influence or would any notice have been taken.

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  2. He might well agree with you. However, I have never yet experienced an organisation or individual that gets everything 100% right 100% of the time, whereas on the whole Cardiff Bus do a very impressive job. So, faced with a choice between commending them for a swift response that will benefit the customer or snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, I'll stick with the former.

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  4. No, this has not been reported previously. If it had my team, of one, would have sorted it.

    To add some context there are over 1900 bus stops on the Cardiff Bus network all with a flag and timetable case with a stop departure list not a photocopied extract of a timetable leaflet.

    Unfortunately with that number of stops it is not possible to check them all of the time! Not many operators undertake their own stop timetable flags and cases, yes the cases are ours too if not part of the shelter, within the busy areas of their network never mind network-wide.

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  5. Great to see you back on the blog Phil.

    We could do with you making a bus stop crusader mission down here in Hinckleybus land. Arrival have done a fantastic local revamp since taking over Centrebus Holdings which has even extended to a proper timetable book complete with network and route maps. However, this hasn't extended to the bus stops, which look decidedly run down and are either anonymous or still proclaiming Centrebus.

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