(31 Dec 2023, 10:01 pm)Unber43 Honestly, the big issue here is cars. We shoudlnt be cutting bus routes, no one can be bothered to change 3 times to get to Newcastle when the car goes direct, park and rides and proper bus routes which reflect customer demands would be much better
The problem is, unless you build rail lines, most car users just will not move.
No-one is going to drive to a P&R and sit on a bus for 25 minutes, and I mean no-one unless there's parking issues or people are tourists, not to mention most people going over the Tyne Bridge are going no-where near Newcastle City Centre.
An ideal public transport networks, has a feeder bus to a local rail network which does the remainder of the journey missing the traffic. That's called integration in every country in Europe, in England for some reason it's called a 'forced interchange'.
Just to pick the 27 as it's the best route for this.
Currently you've got 4 buses an hour, 50 minutes of it runs from Heworth to South Shields, the other 25 minutes duplicates a Metro Line, sits in traffic and does nothing.
Using the exact same resource, you could terminate every 27 at Heworth and up the whole service to every 10 minutes, even with an interchange of say 10 mins max, it's 8 minutes journey time to Monument. That's 7 minutes less, than sitting on the same bus. Everyone wins literally, but people are literally 'scared' to interchange, not to mention you can choose where you get off in Newcastle.
Other services are the same, the time buses are wasted sitting in traffic, could be utilised to improve services elsewhere. For example you get the 57 upto every 15 minutes between Wardley and Newcastle, removing the 57 from the other end of the route nearly. Curtail the 58 at Gateshead, that resource can be used to fill the gap on the 27 above - and again more reliability.
Other than London, people being scared to interchange is a big problem in Britain.
I'd be over the moon if they upped the 19 to every 15 minutes from here to Northumberland Park and binned the X7 off in the process to Newcastle, it's much quicker especially in the peaks and idm interchanging. I'd be in the minority, but in Europe, it's what we'd have very likely.
