Crosstown Traffic

Public transport is in crisis on Tyneside. The bus companies are trying their best against appalling odds, while the Metro continues to be a dirty, dangerous and unreliable eyesore; the owners NEXUS remain a blight on our landscape and a drain on the public purse. We need action; fast.

Regular readers will know I lack detailed knowledge about the nuances of the 15-man code. That said, I do regard myself as a fan of both the Falcons domestically and Ireland internationally, even if it is a theoretical rather than active support. However, when news of a spare ticket for the Falcons versus Sale Sharks game at St James Park happened my way, I seriously thought about attending. Factoring in that the only time I’ve seen Falcons live they lost 75-3, after taking the lead, against Exeter and that my experience of rugby league’s Magic Weekend at SJP was akin to a mini break with the family of Shannon Matthews, I really did fancy this game. You would have thought the deal breaker would have been the 17.30 kick off, which would theoretically allow me to enjoy my beloved Benfield’s home game with Ryhope CW (we won 2-1 – yay!), before taking a pew in a sanitised Gallowgate End, uniformly attired in Ralph Lauren and refreshingly purged of Ashley’s Army of drooling simpletons.

Sadly, there was the most predictable of spanners in the works that would preclude me from seeing the Falcons maintaining their recent upsurge in form with an impressive comeback win. The Metro was off. That phrase, whether for reasons of sabotage of the overhead lines, stock failure, staffing issues, sociopathic teenage skagheads on the rampage or supposed engineering works, is one of the most repeatedly uttered and maddening clichés regular commuters are forced to mouth to bosses, colleague, friends and loved ones to excuse unfashionably late arrivals at everything from work to wedding receptions. For those of us reliant on the Metro to go about our daily affairs, we have no choice but to use a dirty, dangerous and unreliable system that is completely unsuited to the purpose and unsuitable for the people it was intended to serve. I speak as someone who does not own a motor car, so is reliant on either two-wheeled power or the tragicomic farce that is public transport north of the Tyne.

Of course, the underlying cause of the impending regionwide collapse of Metro is the chronic lack of investment in the rolling stock and infrastructure required, because of successive Government cuts and, it has to be said, disgracefully incompetent management by successive internal and external executive appointments. The German company DGB Regio who were tasked with improving the failing system from 2010 onwards and were relieved of their duties 4 years early in 2017, after consistently failing to deliver on performance targets or reliability and customer satisfaction, stole millions of pounds from the public purse and provided nothing in return.  Of course, the Metro has shown no tangible improvement since DGB Regio were sacked off; indeed, rather in the same way Cameron’s ConDems lied through their teeth at every opportunity from 2010 onwards, blaming Labour for the supposed need for swingeing public cuts in the name of austerity, Nexus continue to dishonestly load responsibility for every driver on the sick, train with malfunctioning doors, gang of North Face radgies throwing Frosty Jack around the place or theft of overhead cables on DGB Regio.

Not only that ex-officio owners NEXUS do this in such a curt, arrogant and dismissive way that suggests they are actually affronted when a customer has the audacity to complain about the appalling level of service that makes one feel defrauded every time you waste money on a ticket. Whether it’s the high-handed and contemptuous faceless control centre bods on the other end of the help point buzzer, phone line or running the Twitter account, you can feel sure that you’ll never get an apology for anything that goes wrong. These call centre contemptibles are utterly unsuited to all public facing duties, as they hate the general public. Mind, at least they are semi-sentient beings unlike the bovine spacehoppers in turquoise fleeces and slate wifebeaters, who are laughably known as mobile revenue control operatives. The hated Checkies, who are so low on the evolutionary scale that Piltdown Man would regard them as dull-witted. Cursed by backsides the width of a retirement bungalow, these bespectacled behemoths are wedged into doors to stop fare dodgers alighting. They don’t frighten me. In fact, they are an utter waste of money. The way to increase revenue is to have 2 staff at every station selling tickets and 2 more on every train. The increase in people paying their fare would make their appointments economically sensible. However, don’t expect planning or forward thinking from NEXUS.

For many years, I’d believed that the most corrupt, incompetent and contemptible set of evil bastards around were Northumbria Police, with a couple of exceptions of course. This opinion was based on their slavish obsession with satisfying the despicable needs of a pair of vile lunatics whose personal enmity towards yours truly resulted in the intellectually-challenged flatties from Forth Banks and Middle Engine Lane jumping to their beck and call, by effectively persecuting me when another specious, dishonest and utterly baseless allegation was made against me by either (code names) Fumima Fumami or Hosiery Hitler. I would contend that the coppers are useless because the bosses are corrupt and the uniformed dross haven’t the brains they were born with; unlike the despicable higher ranks of the legal profession, Edgar Wallace don’t exude oleaginous, arrogant privilege and egregious, mercenary mendacity. They just get hard when they can push people around; those who’ve taken silk are more concerned with taking lives. However, both the cops and the LLB robbers are given a good run for their stolen money by the Metro Nietzsches in the back-office roles and the sub-human space hopper Checkies.

The last week of February wasn’t a good one for Metro. I was on lates that week, meaning the 22.52 from Four Lane Ends towards the Coast was the appropriate service for me. Monday 25^th, it didn’t show. I used the help point at the station to ask why; the operative cut me off without a reason. Tuesday 26^th, the 13.02 from Tynemouth to Four Lane Ends went out of service at Cullercoats. I made a complaint by phone to a poor sap called Christine Bulmer, a Customer Communications Assistant who got the short straw of being my go-to Metro drone all week long. She was very sympathetic but offered no explanation. Wednesday 27^th, a completely plastered middle-aged woman was falling all over the carriage. Eventually she sat down and promptly threw up all over herself and the seats. A predatory, baldy, roid-head, swigging from a Carling carry-out managed to inveigle himself into her company and wrestled her off the train at Northumberland Park. I wasn’t going to front him up about this, for grounds of my cowardly personal safety, so I called the help point when I got off at Tynemouth, warning the reasonable person on the other end of the phone about the potential abduction, as well as the carriage being waist deep in vomit. Typically, there had been a large gang of cowardly, fat Checkies at Four Lane Ends, messing about on their phones and looking to intimidate anyone who looked week, rather than fronting any of the criminals running riot on the system. Thursday 28^th, the 22.52 didn’t show up. No reason. No explanation. I tweeted the @MyMetro account. No response. By next morning I was blocked, so I got back on the phone to Christine Bulmer, who promised to investigate.

Luckily, I was on earlies the next two weeks, so my bicycle came into play and I had both exercise and equilibrium on my way to graft. Eventually, I got a letter of explanation from Christine Bulmer, but no apology and no money off vouchers for my inconvenience. Still, I never buy a ticket anyway, so that’s no loss. Amusingly I got another letter, from Huw Lewis, the Customer Services Director no less, who confirmed I deserved to be blocked on Twitter for being “disruptive.” However, if I am a good boy for 3 months, I can ask them to reconsider. The really amusing thing is that I’m no longer blocked and can interact with @MyMetro, an account which follows me, should I wish. Such abject disconnection is typical of an organisation that is collapsing in on itself. Despite promises of £390m worth of new investment and a fleet of trains coming into use by the start of 2022, I doubt the Metro will last that long. I’ve got some news for Huw Lewis; neither will he.

You know what? The utter incompetence of the Metro is one of the main contributory causes of the gridlock on the roads north of the Tyne. Monday to Thursday rush hour is bad enough; the closure of Killingworth Road causing nose to tail traffic both round Four Lane Ends and Haddricksmill roundabouts, the on-going excavations at Silverlink that have taken longer to complete than Machu Pichu did, the unmusical vehicular statues on Jesmond Road and, worst of all, the absolutely disastrous lights at Billy Mill that have doubled the length of most homeward journeys to the Coast since they were completed. However, despite these nightmare conditions, more and people are choosing to drive because the alternative provided by the Metro is so unpalatable that only a rank fool of hopelessly naïve optimist would rely on NEXUS to get them to work in a timely fashion and home again safely after dark, especially as the Byker to Shields line is a feral jungle after dark.

Unfortunately, the dirty, dangerous and delayed Metro experience means that local bus companies must also bear the burden of Metro’s incompetence. Every time the trains go off, Metro tickets are accepted on buses. When does that happen the other way around? Every time there’s a planned weekend cancellation, generally coinciding with a major event at SJP, we get replacement buses. When do we have replacement trains for out of commission buses? Instead, what we get are buses snarled up in the north of the Tyne gridlock. There are so many people opting to use motor cars because the Metro is a disgrace that the pitifully marginalised and ignored bus companies suffer a straitening backlash, though I believe we’ve moved on from the motorist on Carr Hill Road in Felling, springing from his vehicle after being cut up by the 649, announcing to the bus driver, in a time when attacks on staff were a regular occurrence; “Nee wonder yeez cunts get fucked.”

There are 3 distinct companies running services north of the Tyne. The service I use most regularly is the Tynemouth to Newcastle 306, which is operated by the long-distance Arriva fleet, which were United when I was a bairn. Reliability is decent and the new fleet, with Wi-Fi and charging points as standard, are comfortable. Stagecoach are the real community company, operating all the east to west PTE services. While the 38 is a jewel of a bus, the 1, 62 and 63 are punished by the Four Lane Ends to Chillingham Road and then New Bridge Street logjam. Reliability is deplorable, but not their fault. Apparently, the services dedicated to the lower orders, specifically the 12, 22, 39 and 40, are always full to capacity, which is good to see. I don’t know much about Go North East, the old Northern red buses, other than the fact the 1 and 1A are pitiful and the bus are really uncomfortable. I prefer not to travel on them as they let the side down. That said, any bus is better than every Metro. Certainly, the plaintive graffito All Buses Are Shit scrawled across the timetable at a stop on Melbourne Street in around 89 or 90 seems rather anachronistic.

Of course, geographical reasons mean we can’t run trains up Westgate Hill and that way out of the city, but it’s a disgrace there aren’t bus only lanes on all the major arterial routes into and out of the city. The West Road, Gosforth High Street, Shields Road, the Tyne Bridge; make them bus only 6.30-9.30 and 16.00-19.30. Make bus transport a viable and attractive alternative to sitting in a massive tailback or squashing onto a massively delayed Metro.

Either that or give everyone a free bike for their Council Tax. It’s got to be better than giving all that public money to the Metro or Northumbria Police.