There's a lot of anger on local social media in Medway at the moment about bus reliability. Increased traffic with thanks to the frequent holdups and closures of the M2 are partly responsible [...]
I believe pretty much all West Kent operators are struggling slightly (again) at the moment, owing to the temptation of working for Go-Ahead on Fasttrack routes. There have also been an inordinate number of road closures ("emergency" or otherwise) recently.
The issue is that Gillingham Depot are really poor at communicating issues to the public. Tunbridge Wells do this really well via social media and the Arriva app. [...]
[...] they said that staff at Gillingham have no access to social media of any kind and whilst they used to have it it was taken away with no reason given other than customer services and social media was now centralised. I don't know if this is correct, especially if TW are communicating via it, but given the obsession of a lot of the big bus companies now of centralising such functions, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the case
I think there are two issues being slightly conflated here. It's long been my understanding (dating back to since the introduction of the new website) that nobody "local" has access to the website or social media channels, except perhaps unofficially, and in many cases, the messages passed out are simply copy-and-paste from internal systems, if the duty inspectors have time to send them to the central team. There have certainly been occasions where even relatively official looking communications sound like they've been dictated over the phone to a driver ("down here, up there, round the roundabout...").
Tunbridge Wells and Northfleet are, to the best of my knowledge, managed entirely from the garage: at least there isn't a roving inspector at, say, Gravesend or Tonbridge Station. Maidstone does move the duty inspector to the bus station in the off-peak (non run-out/in) hours, but they are often in their office at the south end of the bus station (driver's rest room), so staff see them, rather than they seeing staff. This means they are basically invisible to the public, unless you happen to know the lost property office is where they hide out!
Gillingham, by contrast, for all its faults, has the duty inspector at Chatham Bus Station during the day, and they are usually "mobile" - in the bus station, in a high-vis jacket, with a clipboard. That may make it more frustrating for drivers to find them, but they are also findable by members of the public. That does tend to mean they aren't sitting at a desk typing messages half the travelling public won't/can't read anyway, but will answer (well, most of them) if you have a question in person - and can see which queues are longest if they need to swap a bus out.
Drivers may not always be the most helpful (especially if approached 'with attitude', but I must say, after an incident which closed part of the bus station on Monday afternoon leading to services having to pick up "wherever", I saw half a dozen drivers answer queries from passengers to the best of their knowledge whilst the inspector was left to manage what he could of the situation.
Also, on different matters, Arriva Click Ebbsfleet withdrawn from the end of December (which is what I came here to post to start with... yes, I know it's officially Thamesside, but there is now more AKT in Essex than Kent!):
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/demand-responsive-transport.205430/page-15#post-7074254
www.arrivabus.co.uk
