(29 Sep 2021, 4:57 pm)deanmachine wrote The thing is, where do you stop on services to Team Valley? When I went to college there about 10 years ago, I was completely fine getting the X34 from the Nook or going to Shields to get the Metro then swapping to the 94 to Kingsway. Do we give people a direct bus from Harton Nook? I had classmates from Burnopfield, Ryton, Whiteleas, Washington, East Herrington, I know a few people who work on the Valley too from random areas of the North East too, none of them had direct buses. Yet when I see the workers services they're only ever carrying half a dozen people so where do you run a service from? I honestly don't know how you would route buses to these places where people work that would actually tempt people who think travelling to Gateshead and changing was too much hassle for them. Most of them seem to travel around most of an area to get enough passengers to justify, and in doing so it turns people away because it's quicker for someone in Sunderland to get the Metro or X24 to Gateshead and switching onto a 94 rather than travelling slowly across most of the Sunderland area on the 939 before heading to the Valley.

I know there's other examples too where I know people locally work such as Quorum, Cobalt or Doxford Park. Apparently there used to be a South Shields GNE depot operated bus that went from Shields around some estates onto the A19 at Lindisfarne Roundabout straight to Doxy, would that type of service be justifiable in the current climate? I don't think so.

I'm hoping this new enhanced bus partnership means services like this could be brought back and maybe entice people out of their cars? I doubt it though, and commercial operators are certainly not going to introduce services like this any time soon. People like my mate who works at the Valley and lives in Harton would rather sit in traffic in his car than go anywhere near a bus. Moving to electric cars at least will reduce localised pollution but congestion is only going to get worse for everyone.

Agree with all of this and especially the last point.  Congestion is going to be made much worse by reducing car lanes (increasing congestion) to create bus priority measures, without fundamental changes to the way operators work (which is not going to happen when profit is king and providing a public service is secondary).  Martijn has been clear in a recent briefing that the future for buses is on high usage, mass transit - so run from X to Y and if you happen to live in Z or A to W, tough/walk/change potentially multiple times or modes of transport.  Improving journey times might result in marginal gains by tempting more people who live on or close to the X to Y route that is sufficiently profitable for the operator to service, but will do nothing for the majority - those people making the myriad other journeys which will continue to be made in the car, just crammed into one lane instead of two.  The danger is the extent to which this stupid approach of making the bus more attractive relative to the car only really by deliberately worsening car journey times is pushed, risks breaking the entire transport system (so-called public, as well as private).