Just to put this under the Stagecoach thread too:

Great Park bus services

New bus services to Newcastle Great Park

https://www.stagecoachbus.com/promos-and...s-services

The 49 sounds pretty pointless to me, Stagecoach need to sort out their entire network, it's a farce

(17 Jun 2024, 1:30 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote Yet they seemingly managed to run an efficient service (or at least more efficient than the current operator), on the same timetable.

(12 Jul 2024, 3:51 pm)V514DFT wrote The 49 sounds pretty pointless to me, Stagecoach need to sort out their entire network, it's a farce

Sort out what? By no means a perfect......but a very stable network compared to GoNE and ADC / ANOR

(12 Jul 2024, 3:51 pm)V514DFT wrote The 49 sounds pretty pointless to me, Stagecoach need to sort out their entire network, it's a farce

Sounds like Stagecoach has got the funds which exist for Great Park (Arriva used to have it before - X46).

Surprised this didn't happen years ago, it makes much more sense than the Q3 which duplicates numerous Arriva services and the X47 is literally already sitting there.

The 49 will be just the Q3 though.

(12 Jul 2024, 6:03 pm)Storx wrote Sounds like Stagecoach has got the funds which exist for Great Park (Arriva used to have it before - X46).

Surprised this didn't happen years ago, it makes much more sense than the Q3 which duplicates numerous Arriva services and the X47 is literally already sitting there.

The 49 will be just the Q3 though.

The link road between Great Park and Kingston Park hasn’t been open that long, so the opportunity wasn’t there years ago.

Stagecoach can presumably offer a Great Park to Newcastle link (as an extension of their X47) at a much lower cost than Go North East with their dedicated service, so re-allocating the S106 funding from Go North East to Stagecoach probably makes a fair amount of sense from a sustainability point of view.

Obviously gives Go North East a bit of a problem - there is already a surplus of electric buses following frequency reductions (hence two being used on the NHS Hopper contract), and a half-hourly Q3 from Haymarket to Wallsend via St Peters would only require three buses (which would mean six were spare - and that assumes the Q3 isn’t moved to Percy Main at that point).

Paired with the loss of some school contracts, hopefully that is an end to the driver-related short-notice cancellations at Riverside!

(12 Jul 2024, 7:54 pm)Dan wrote The link road between Great Park and Kingston Park hasn’t been open that long, so the opportunity wasn’t there years ago.

Stagecoach can presumably offer a Great Park to Newcastle link (as an extension of their X47) at a much lower cost than Go North East with their dedicated service, so re-allocating the S106 funding from Go North East to Stagecoach probably makes a fair amount of sense from a sustainability point of view.

Obviously gives Go North East a bit of a problem - there is already a surplus of electric buses following frequency reductions (hence two being used on the NHS Hopper contract), and a half-hourly Q3 from Haymarket to Wallsend via St Peters would only require three buses (which would mean six were spare - and that assumes the Q3 isn’t moved to Percy Main at that point).

Paired with the loss of some school contracts, hopefully that is an end to the driver-related short-notice cancellations at Riverside!

Must be at least 2 years now? Feels like it, at least, anyway but I'm probably very wrong there.

Yeah that's true with the Q3, guess it depends what they decide to do though. Assume there will no doubt be other changes from the same time as September is usually when the big changes North of the Tyne happen and I'm sure there's lot of speculative ideas what you could do with the Q3 ie. merging it with the 41/41A or 355, or whatever.

(12 Jul 2024, 5:13 pm)L469 YVK wrote Sort out what? By no means a perfect......but a very stable network compared to GoNE and ADC / ANOR

Well the 62/63 for a start

(12 Jul 2024, 8:34 pm)Storx wrote Must be at least 2 years now? Feels like it, at least, anyway but I'm probably very wrong there.

Believe the Roseden Way to Spine Road junction which Stagecoach are planning on using only opened in November 2023 (https://www.newcastlegreatpark.com/rosed...ning-date/). The Spine Road fully opened, connecting to Kingston Park, in October 2022 so they could have sent it up there and used a different junction to do a smaller loop. 

Regardless, I imagine they were likely waiting for the current funding for the Q3 to end. 

There seems to be some discontent with the proposed changes from those living in the parts of Great Park on the Gosforth side of the A1, mainly as this leaves them with the 49 which looks like a pretty useless service. From what I gather the main issue with the Q3 is the pretty pointless Jesmond diversion, which causes reliability issues during the peaks and extends journey times to Newcastle on every trip. These changes address that in a way, and do provide better connections with Kingston Park and much improved evening services, but the 49 needs to run earlier and later.

(13 Jul 2024, 6:55 pm)PH - BQA wrote Believe the Roseden Way to Spine Road junction which Stagecoach are planning on using only opened in November 2023 (https://www.newcastlegreatpark.com/rosed...ning-date/). The Spine Road fully opened, connecting to Kingston Park, in October 2022 so they could have sent it up there and used a different junction to do a smaller loop. 

Regardless, I imagine they were likely waiting for the current funding for the Q3 to end. 

There seems to be some discontent with the proposed changes from those living in the parts of Great Park on the Gosforth side of the A1, mainly as this leaves them with the 49 which looks like a pretty useless service. From what I gather the main issue with the Q3 is the pretty pointless Jesmond diversion, which causes reliability issues during the peaks and extends journey times to Newcastle on every trip. These changes address that in a way, and do provide better connections with Kingston Park and much improved evening services, but the 49 needs to run earlier and later.

I know which junction you mean here and it did open later, we just used it get from Kingston Park, forgot about that actually.

I'm not surprised to be honest, if Newcastle Council actually bothered to fix bridges then this could literally be all fixed easily imo by doing:
553, PVR 1: Regent Centre - Hollywood Avenue - Salters Bridge - South Gosforth - Freeman Hospital (Every 30 Minutes as now)
X46, PVR 2: Newcastle - Gosforth - Brunton Park - Featherstone Grove - Great Park (Every 30 Minutes)

Literally fixed it in a minute and improved the services bar the few who don't use the bus along Hollywood Avenue who have to change now.

As long as Salters Bridge is a bus gate then there's never going to be issues because it'll never meet anything.

The X46 and 49 duplicating each other 2 minutes apart is terrible terrible bus planning imo.

---

Guessing people around there aren't aware of the X46 though mind as that's probably a better alternative, putting a bus stop where the bus stop is rather than hail and ride would probably help though.

PB0002404/440
Variation BUSWAYS TRAVEL SERVICES LTD 49 Newcastle Eldon Square Great Park

Looks like more stops being added in - Monday to Saturday daytime service. New trips added at customers' requests

Great Park latest

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chronic...753904.amp

I like the line about those against the changes being asked to leave. Dirty protest?

They should just be honest and say they don't want to share a bus with people from Cowgate rather than Gosforth. Snobs, the lot of them

(18 Aug 2024, 10:22 am)DeltaMan wrote Great Park latest

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chronic...753904.amp

I like the line about those against the changes being asked to leave. Dirty protest?

They should just be honest and say they don't want to share a bus with people from Cowgate rather than Gosforth. Snobs, the lot of them

Total storm in a teacup stuff. 

The X47 is quicker and more frequent (during both the day and the evening!), and ultimately the majority of people using the Q3 from Great Park do use it to get to Newcastle - not Gosforth High Street. The 49 covers Gosforth High Street, just not on Sundays.

I notice they're quoting people who are 77 and 78 years of age, people who do not pay for their bus travel and likely have nothing better to do than complain about service changes which are significantly better for the vast majority of working/school aged people.

(18 Aug 2024, 12:10 pm)PH - BQA wrote Total storm in a teacup stuff. 

The X47 is quicker and more frequent (during both the day and the evening!), and ultimately the majority of people using the Q3 from Great Park do use it to get to Newcastle - not Gosforth High Street. The 49 covers Gosforth High Street, just not on Sundays.

I notice they're quoting people who are 77 and 78 years of age, people who do not pay for their bus travel and likely have nothing better to do than complain about service changes which are significantly better for the vast majority of working/school aged people.

To be fair if all these people moaning about the buses we're actually using the buses then they wouldn't need funding and GNE would be running it commercially. 

It seems like one of these things where someone uses the bus once a month is now wondering why the bus can't run anymore. The Q3 is not busy in Great Park, infact I'd go as far and say most buses are pretty much dead. 

I'm also not sure why people need to go to Gosforth either, there's now links being provided to Kingston Park instead and there's a hell of a lot more there for shopping needs.

I know where I'd rather have the connection and the Metro / Bus connection from there is neglible depending where people get on.

(18 Aug 2024, 10:22 am)DeltaMan wrote Great Park latest

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chronic...753904.amp

I like the line about those against the changes being asked to leave. Dirty protest?

They should just be honest and say they don't want to share a bus with people from Cowgate rather than Gosforth. Snobs, the lot of them

I can understand that to a point. I was speaking to a woman I know on Friday who said she will feel less safe going that way. I have to say, on occasions I've used the x47 on an evening, I have been a bit more wary than when I use my normal evening services.

(18 Aug 2024, 3:17 pm)Shrek wrote I can understand that to a point. I was speaking to a woman I know on Friday who said she will feel less safe going that way. I have to say, on occasions I've used the x47 on an evening, I have been a bit more wary than when I use my normal evening services.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/nor...818568.amp


As many people have said I don't know how people can be so privileged to live in a new estate and own a car who clearly don't use the bus hence why the Q3 has been cut and cut since it was the X40 same with the 46 (now the X46) which went from 15 mins Freq to hourly. To then reject BETTER bus services for everyone (and the west side of Great Park actually having a bus), I mean come on in 2024 someone is actually trying to improve and create new bus links instead of having minimal hourly services - this is RARE! I mean why does it have to be one or the other...

Why couldn't they demand for the 49 to go to other places for better links which depending on how far would only be a PVR +1. Or just the Q3 at a half hourly frequency to go to through Brunton Park both ways and connect to the P&R site giving what looks to be the 'needed' connections to Gosforth (not sure about Jesmond) or even the X46 to extended which would also suffice. 

They have either signed the petition expecting a decrease in services and jumping on the bandwagon (just look at the state of privatisation) or genuinely will give up everything to be able to connect to Gosforth High Street and Jesmond!

Nonetheless they have gone from an abysmal 3x Q3's an hour, to 4x X47s, 1x 49 (extended at peaks) & Q3X (at peaks) so up to 6 buses per hour. Yet people are stupid enough to demand the 3 buses and hour and an hourly service after 6pm and on Sundays.

I have no words.

(29 Aug 2024, 7:59 am)logidoodah wrote https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/nor...818568.amp


As many people have said I don't know how people can be so privileged to live in a new estate and own a car who clearly don't use the bus hence why the Q3 has been cut and cut since it was the X40 same with the 46 (now the X46) which went from 15 mins Freq to hourly. To then reject BETTER bus services for everyone (and the west side of Great Park actually having a bus), I mean come on in 2024 someone is actually trying to improve and create new bus links instead of having minimal hourly services - this is RARE! I mean why does it have to be one or the other...

Why couldn't they demand for the 49 to go to other places for better links which depending on how far would only be a PVR +1. Or just the Q3 at a half hourly frequency to go to through Brunton Park both ways and connect to the P&R site giving what looks to be the 'needed' connections to Gosforth (not sure about Jesmond) or even the X46 to extended which would also suffice. 

They have either signed the petition expecting a decrease in services and jumping on the bandwagon (just look at the state of privatisation) or genuinely will give up everything to be able to connect to Gosforth High Street and Jesmond!

Nonetheless they have gone from an abysmal 3x Q3's an hour, to 4x X47s, 1x 49 (extended at peaks) & Q3X (at peaks) so up to 6 buses per hour. Yet people are stupid enough to demand the 3 buses and hour and an hourly service after 6pm and on Sundays.

I have no words.

Those organising the petition seem to either be deliberately spreading information, or are too thick to understand what the changes actually entail. 

The changes represent a significant increase in daytime and evening frequencies, an improvement in journey times to Newcastle, while maintaining the link with Gosforth through the 49. 

These frequency and journey time improvements are nowhere to be seen in any of the posts by the people most actively promoting the petition, who seem more bothered about getting home from a pub in Gosforth on a Sunday night. 

Of the 2000 signatures, I genuinely believe a significant amount of them will be due to people believing that the bus service is going entirely because of the 'cutting us off' claims peddled constantly on Facebook pages and the Chronicle. 

They've also started to be annoyed at the fact that Stagecoach will operate diesel buses, without grasping that they meet Euro 6 emissions standards and that they live on a new build estate with lorries driving around constantly...

The Q3 as it stands is essentially worthless as a service to anyone wanting to get to or from Newcastle, which is surely the predominant use case for it.

After reading everything about Great Park.... I say scrap all of their bus routes the snobby pricks. They haven't even gave it a chance before slating it. Telling you now, it'll be ran 10x better than the Q3.

(13 Jul 2024, 1:44 pm)V514DFT wrote Well the 62/63 for a start

Well the extension to throckley didn't help and a lack of double decks isn't a help either, the 62 was the longest route by far and it has a couple of bottlenecks which really slow it down and bunch them up,

There was an idea of a 64 route which I heard floated about but never seemed to get off the drawing board, from the sounds of it, it was a quicker loop service of shields road to west Denton park I believe, I don't know whether it was envisaged as a higher frequency route or a express route.

(29 Aug 2024, 8:49 am)PH - BQA wrote Those organising the petition seem to either be deliberately spreading information, or are too thick to understand what the changes actually entail. 

The changes represent a significant increase in daytime and evening frequencies, an improvement in journey times to Newcastle, while maintaining the link with Gosforth through the 49. 

These frequency and journey time improvements are nowhere to be seen in any of the posts by the people most actively promoting the petition, who seem more bothered about getting home from a pub in Gosforth on a Sunday night. 

Of the 2000 signatures, I genuinely believe a significant amount of them will be due to people believing that the bus service is going entirely because of the 'cutting us off' claims peddled constantly on Facebook pages and the Chronicle. 

They've also started to be annoyed at the fact that Stagecoach will operate diesel buses, without grasping that they meet Euro 6 emissions standards and that they live on a new build estate with lorries driving around constantly...

The Q3 as it stands is essentially worthless as a service to anyone wanting to get to or from Newcastle, which is surely the predominant use case for it.

They're very inconsistent aswell. One minute they want a bus to Jesmond, the next minute they want a fast bus that misses Jesmond. It's all a mess if you ask me. 

They should work with the Nexus / NHS and extend the 553 through every 30 minutes instead of you ask me. 

It does exactly what they want, obviously they'll no doubt moan that it's too far to walk in Gosforth instead but at the end of the day they did use the Q3 excuse for Freeman connections. They can have one direct now...

(29 Aug 2024, 11:43 am)toward6931 wrote Well the extension to throckley didn't help and a lack of double decks isn't a help either, the 62 was the longest route by far and it has a couple of bottlenecks which really slow it down and bunch them up,

There was an idea of a 64 route which I heard floated about but never seemed to get off the drawing board, from the sounds of it, it was a quicker loop service of shields road to west Denton park I believe, I don't know whether it was envisaged as a higher frequency route or a express route.

The best thing they could do is drop the 62/63 down to every 20 minutes and add a new short 64 between Four Lane Ends and West Denton. The buses on the Northern side are nowhere near busy enough to warrant a 15 minute service at any point of day so it would be better to have to buses on the core section instead imo. 

Obviously you'd end up upping the Throckley extension to every 20 minutes but that's not the end of the world.

(29 Aug 2024, 11:43 am)toward6931 wrote Well the extension to throckley didn't help and a lack of double decks isn't a help either, the 62 was the longest route by far and it has a couple of bottlenecks which really slow it down and bunch them up,

There was an idea of a 64 route which I heard floated about but never seemed to get off the drawing board, from the sounds of it, it was a quicker loop service of shields road to west Denton park I believe, I don't know whether it was envisaged as a higher frequency route or a express route.

Yup, thats the 64 idea i heard, but it was only going to do F.L.E- West Denton Park, personally i'd re-introduce the 64 in its entirity, Forest Hall (Glebe Road)- Chapel House, thus allowing the 11 to revert to being West Denton- North Kenton, i do believe the proposed 64 was going to serve Central Station, but that wouldnt be needed now the 38 serves Forest Hall, the 63 could be sent back along Two Ball Lonnen to Stamfordham Road, and the 64 take its place along Netherby Drive, Silver Lonnen to Stamfordham Road

(29 Aug 2024, 2:37 pm)V514DFT wrote Yup, thats the 64 idea i heard, but it was only going to do F.L.E- West Denton Park, personally i'd re-introduce the 64 in its entirity, Forest Hall (Glebe Road)- Chapel House, thus allowing the 11 to revert to being West Denton- North Kenton, i do believe the proposed 64 was going to serve Central Station, but that wouldnt be needed now the 38 serves Forest Hall, the 63 could be sent back along Two Ball Lonnen to Stamfordham Road, and the 64 take its place along Netherby Drive, Silver Lonnen to Stamfordham Road

I’d be tempted given the 36 frequency increase to reroute the 71/72/87 via Netherby Drive and swap with 63 via Stamfordham Road