01 Jun 2016, 10:20 pm
#95
(01 Jun 2016, 9:33 pm)Andreos1 Unfortunately I can't see the map, with being on my phone.
Tried on two now, with no joy.
I knew there was a fair few stops not served now - like the ones on the roads I mentioned a few weeks back.
Genuinely had no idea that there were so many across the town - the sort of numbers which could open up a debate around de-regulation, the big operators leaving communities excluded etc.
And the daft thing is that quiet routes and even areas can be turned around. What's impressed me, this week, is how busy most of the 22s we've caught have been. We don't have many more buses per hour than 12-13 years ago, when we moved here and actually fewer buses than about 5 years ago when we had the 21, 21A, 22 and 57A, but the vehicles are much, much nicer and the connectivity is much better to the places people want to visit the most (apart from the Trimdons and Sedgefield, which take over an hour to get to by 2 buses, now, rather than the previous 20-30 minutes on a single bus, which is annoying for people with family that way). I've also noticed that more fares are taken than there used to be. Was a time when most passengers towards Durham were ENCT and students.
I think there's a vicious circle. If a route isn't very frequent, people CBA. If the service is unreliable, people really CBA (particularly if it means they run the risk of a £15 taxi fare if they need to be home for a certain time and the hourly bus is a no show). The 22 was both of those before it went twice hourly, swapped over to finishing in Sunderland instead of Hartlepool and then got the Sapphire streetlites. People actually quite like using it, now. I don't know what ANE's figures are for the first year of being a Sapphire route, but there has to have been at least a 50% increase in usage.
