Bus Drivers Praised

Following atrocious weather conditions in the Durham, Tyne & Wear and Northumberland areas on Wednesday evening of this week (5th Dec) roads were gridlocked as vehicles struggled to negotiate the snowy and icy conditions.

Go North East have praised their drivers for their efforts and have released some of the messages of thanks sent by customers, some of which are shown below.

• Tonight my son was stranded at school due to poor weather and a series of road traffic accidents in the area. This resulted in his school bus being delayed and a large number of children having to stay in the school for several hours. Eventually a bus arrived to take the children home and I arranged to collect my son and his friend from the bus stop. When I arrived at 9.30pm my son and his friend were waiting, accompanied by the bus driver and a teacher. I would like to pass on my sincere thanks to the driver for ensuring all the children arrived home safely, it was greatly appreciated.

• hello, I would like to thank the kind driver for taking good care of us all on the bus back home... he was already late due to the tremendous backlog of traffic .it took us 2 hours in gridlock traffic but our driver drove with great care and consideration to traffic and his passengers .I bet his mum be proud of him..the humour on the bus was great to we seemed to have a couple of comedians to make light of the journey and people had longer to talk also there were some young people upstairs who had a birthday and were singing happy birthday then downstairs people sang with them which was amusing made our journey more pleasant. a lot of people had to stand so the people sitting did a swap system they sit for a while then let someone else sit…the atmosphere on the bus entertained everyone.

• Our bus left Newcastle on time, 15.27 from Central Station. With no problems until the Metro Centre. Then we met the chaos. We didn't get to Dipton until 20.00. The driver was brilliant. Kept calm, kept us informed and used a lot of common sense and local knowledge. Please pass on my compliments to this driver.

• Can you please compliment the drivers on your services? It is clear that they tried/ are trying to keep the buses as normal service as possible. Thank you.

• Can you please pass my praise on to the driver of 4931 today which left Durham about 18.40? Kept us all well informed and even ran myself and another on to Washington after finding a manager to check that it was OK.

• I wish to bring to your attention the very safe and professional driving of one of your drivers. I was travelling with my wife and young daughter when suddenly the weather conditions deteriorated dramatically with heavy snow and what can only be described as horrendous road conditions. The driver of the bus was suddenly presented with extremely poor road conditions which were not only covered with snow, but also ice. I wish to convey how impressed I was in the driving standards displayed, not only negotiating a steep ice covered bank on the A691 Witton Gilbert, but he also maintained contact with the passengers, passing safety messages and reassuring us throughout. Please pass on my thanks to the driver concerned.
• hi Go north east I would like to thank you for your excellent service on 05/12/12 due to the weather conditions you have done the best for all customers who travel on your buses, I would like to send a big thank you to all your team for the hard work you have done to help inform people on the delays your buses have/ are going through. Thank You again for doing your best with everything.
  
  
  Stephen King, Go North East marketing & sales manager, said “Everyone knows how difficult things got yesterday teatime and it’s great to see how everyone pulled together to get home. We had passengers on buses telling jokes and singing happy birthday to each other along with stories of our drivers battling through safely to get everyone home”.