(28 Dec 2019, 9:37 pm)BusLoverMum wrote I think part of the issue is that single bus journeys are fine but as soon as you have to change buses, then the journey becomes needlessly long and complicated. It's bad enough on Sundays but, for example, if you wanted to get from Gilesgate or Newton Hall to Newcastle, then you would, if from Gilesgate, walk to Sunderland road for a 20 or into the city centre then wait for one of the two, unevenly spaced, 21s of the hour, or in Newton Hall, just walk into Fram or Pity me, as the 50 wasn't running. We live on the 21 route but Bigun still didn't fancy it. On a Sunday, we can travel back from Newcastle or the Metrocentre either through Gateshead or Stanley, all in reasonable time, since the connections at Stanley are good, but we didn't really have that as a back up in case we missed the 21s or they were too busy, which made the prospect unappealing for bigun.

So, just as when we lived in arrivaland, we took the car. Bigun even got out of bed before 9am, specially!

Single journeys are far more attractive, I have less desires to go to Sunderland since Arriva curtailed the X21 at Peterlee as can't be chewed on changing in either Durham or Peterlee to get there.

Another example is Transdev are withdrawing their service X41 between Accrington & Manchester (via Ramsbottom) in January and they are really trying to push the passengers along that route to use alternative routes that involve connections and try as they might people are not having it, even though from Accrington you get 464 to Rawtenstall then X43 to reach Manchester changing at the newly opened Rawtenstall Bus Station with both services operating on a 15 minute frequency, people would still prefer a slightly less frequent direct service without having to change.