(10 Oct 2022, 8:09 am)Unber43 But tbf if you look at Durham P&R thats quite successful, however the 20 stand outside of the Retail Park isn't really that popular where the P&R. I only got the idea cos of how many cars I saw Parked in Metro Coach Park on Saturday, and Yes I know their was a football match on.
Durham park and ride is successful (only on a weekend I'd say) because you aren't paying twice, the fare is reasonably cheap and it's not a long drawn out journey to get from car park to city centre.
Same goes for York, which happens to be an extremely popular park and ride system at all times. Free parking, pay once on the bus.
We've struggled in Newcastle and Gateshead to have a functioning park and ride bus service...
- Great Park: signposted well from the A1, but poor frequency to Newcastle and long journey times compared to driving.
- Regent Centre: Pay and Display car park via an app/coins which is too tight to fit any medium sized car around. Plenty of buses though.
- Heworth: Pay and Display car park via an app, plenty of choice for services to Newcastle and Gateshead though.
- MetroCentre: Plenty of spare free parking spaces, the facility works on match days, but P&R is currently banned at other times for the main car parks. Reasonable journey times into Newcastle and Gateshead on the existing network.
You then have the other park and rides for the Metro which are underutilised and expensive due to having to pay twice.
There's a huge car park behind Gateshead College which is always empty at weekends. The car park at the Sage is pretty much deserted. Not a single effort has been put into marketing or operating these as park and walk/ride sites.
So there's seven examples of things to improve before even thinking of opening another park and ride, which will probably also be abandoned before long.
