(15 Aug 2021, 10:41 am)Andreos1 wrote You can stick as many bus lanes and priority measures as you want. Unless the bus goes where the people are going, bus lanes are pretty much pointless.

Bus lanes are pretty pointless when a council changes the road layout to such an extent where it becomes more hassle for a bus to use the bus lane rather than the roads the bus lane is meant to avoid.

Gateshead Council, in particular, must be singled out for this. The idea of the Centrelink was to allow the X66 to run traffic-free from the Teams into the centre of Gateshead. Now, with the closure of Hills Street and the bottom of West Street to buses, and the multitude of traffic lights which stand in the way between the bottom of Prince Consort Road and Pipewellgate, why would any driver driving the X66 use Centrelink towards the Metrocentre? It's easier and quicker to use Askew Road. It's slightly better heading into Gateshead, I guess, but it used to be a lot easier when buses coming from the direction of the High Level Bridge were allowed to use West Street and filter into the Interchange from Prince Consort Road. As an alleged bus priority measure, it's an absolute mess as it stands now.

Whenever you see council chiefs such as Martin Gannon (or whomever) standing with directors of bus companies such as Martijn Gilbert (or whomever) announcing the latest initiative to encourage people to use public transport, it's pretty hard to take whatever they say seriously as we've heard it all before. It always comes across as a cynical publicity stunt to raise the public profile of each without anyone actually committing or delivering anything of note. It doesn't convince me, it probably won't convince anyone else either.