Newcastle Clean Air Zone: services which need to be upgraded

Storx

4,584

28 Sep 2021, 10:33 pm #104

(28 Sep 2021, 12:28 pm)ne14ne1 Note I was talking about bus users on those three corridors. I didn’t claim general traffic was all heading to the city centre.

Newcastle City Council is rightly prioritising buses so that bus passengers within the City of Newcastle (& no doubt beyond too) can have a quicker more reliable journey into the city centre where they are either heading to alight or connect to onwards travel.

In the wider region hundreds of millions has been spent in recent years on the Silverlink junction, Testos junction, A1 Team Valley to Metrocentre and now A1 Metrocentre to Great Park and A1 Team Valley to Coal House(?).
I don’t see why spending a little on bus priorities on three key bus commuter corridors within the city isn’t being welcomed, especially here on a bus enthusiast forum.

To say there shouldn’t be bus services on the Coast Rd is rather odd. Communities in Sandyford, North Heaton, High Heaton, Cochrane Park, Station Rd, Battle Hill, Norham Rd, Billy Mill, Preston Village etc aren’t all within walking distance to Metro stations, and therefore need buses along the Coast Rd. The same applies to communities along the West Rd and Great North Rd corridors.

The thing is though as someone else has said the Coast Road isn't a commuter road into town. Bus priority measures isn't the way to fix the issues.

If you really want to fix the issues then shut the Corner House junction and then shut the Osbourne Avenue junction at the same time. You've pretty much solved the traffic problem for buses. It's not like your creating much of a diversion, Heaton Road users from the South wanting to head East can use Cardington Terrace. Users from Heaton Road to the North can easily use Cragside / Benton Road. Maybe still have a bus gate for Corner House to allow the 38 to still run from Newton Road to the Coast Road West.

For Osbourne Terrace you can easily go around Rosebery Crescent and Churchill Gardens, it's pretty much grade separated anyway.

If you done that with some form of new subway / bridge for pedestrians you've solved the traffic issues and the buses can flow freely but a set of pedestrian lights on very long sequences shouldn't cause too much trouble.

You have to be careful as you think making it quicker for buses is a good idea but cars don't have a set route. So you'll end up is with cars rat running no doubt by Chillingham Road which will end impacting the 62/63 or more cars travelling along Byker Bridge and there's no bus lane Eastbound delaying buses there instead.