Arriva North East: Service Suggestions

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08 Jun 2020, 5:46 pm #954

(07 Jun 2020, 5:27 pm)Storx I understand where your points are coming from but the 308 is Arriva's flagship service or used to be around here anyway; I just don't see the point in reducing it if you don't need too. The Arriva X7 and X9 are just as slow from Blyth to Newcastle (about 10 minutes quicker) but are extremely unreliable (the X7 anyway with South Gosforth).

The majority of customers on the 308 definitely come beyond Billy Mill though, what you have to remember is it's £1.80'ish from Station Road to Newcastle and the majority of passengers have Network One passes whereas the customers beyond Billy Mill will have an Arriva Day Ticket / GoNorthEast (depending on choice). The passengers beyond Billy Mill are worth more than those on the Coast Road itself as you need to try and get the GNE passes from them. Most people just get on whatever bus comes first along the Coast Road, I used to live on it and seen it, and have no loyalty to either Arriva or GNE, so it doesn't really matter whether it's every 10 minutes or every 7.5 minutes along there. If you really want to change the 308, I'd mess around with the Blyth end of the route; possibly send it along Claremont Road and Marine Drive instead of on the coast as you don't need 7 buses an hour between Whitley and Blyth, or try and take it some of North Whitley as the car usage around there is shockingly high but it's no wonder when all you've got is an hourly minibus on the 51 and the W2.

Whilst the 308 is well used between Blyth and Billy Mill (not so that it's rammed but nevertheless well used), a significant number of customers along the Coast Road also use the service due to the 5/10 gaps too between Billy Mill and Willington Square with the 306. Also, not all passengers between Blyth and Billy Mill solely head into Newcastle. I've seen on some mornings in previous years students alighting at Willington Square for TyneMet College.
Arriva have the advantage of the psychological factor on the 308 compared to GNE's 309 that "it goes up the motorway" in passenger speak although that is being slowly being phased out. This combined with more convenient travel opportunities to some extent including evening departure times still gives the 308 an advantage and would continue to do so even with a frequency change. Furthermore, if the 308 is running using at best either an ex Yorkshire Gemini or whatever Blyth decides to throw out, that is the biggest danger for Arriva in terms of losing passengers compared to a well kept and maintained fleet that GNE operates. A slight reduction in frequency but the opportunity to provide a better service including newer vehicles (less new vehicles required in the order).
A reduction to a 10 minute frequency would allow Arriva to concentrate more on their unique parts of the 306 & 308 and create a solid service on their main high frequency part of both routes between Billy Mill and Station Road. The reduction of frequency to every 10 minutes (20 each) will allow Arriva to reduce costs and the pitfalls of being tit for tat between Station Road and Newcastle as well as better matching capacity to demand.
Although a good point about re-routing north of Whitley Bay, most of them areas can already easily access the 308 & 309 within a short walking distance. Not only that, you'd also have to factor in extra running time too.

The bottom line is that if the PVR saving was only small (i.e less than 2x full size vehicles) for the sake of reducing frequency, then it would make sense to keep the frequency the same as now. But when 5x full size vehicles can be taken out of circulation whilst only slightly reducing levels of service, that will bring big cost savings to Arriva and help them become a more leaner and cleaner outfit going forward. And also taking into account that an extended 51A service could bring in further subsidy from NEXUS due to most of service 359 being replaced (Backworth already served by 54).

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