Little Pinks 84
- This service would continue to operate every 20 minutes between Concord, Peel, Barmston and Galleries, additionally serving Brady Square to replace service 8. It would then extend across Galleries to Oxclose and Blackfell, operating a circular service around Washington.
- The section of route between Galleries, Ayton and Rickleton would no longer be part of service 84, but other buses operate in these areas:
- Lambton would continue to be served by services 2 and 50
- Ayton with revised service 50
- Rickleton and Harraton by services 8 and revised service 50
Little Pinks 85
- This service would continue to operate every 20 minutes between Concord, Blackfell, Oxclose and Galleries. It would then extend across Galleries to Barmston and Peel, operating a circular service around Washington (the opposite way around to service 84).
Does this mean that the 84 will operate in one direction from Concord back to Concord via The Galleries with the 85 doing the entire route in reverse? A bit like the old 177/178 for those old enough to remember the old Town service that operated in the 1970s and 1980s (one went down Spout Lane through Barmston then to The Galleries then back to Concord via Oxclose and Blackfell while the other bus went Concord-Blackfell-Oxclose-Galleries-Barmston-Spout Lane - Concord.
My local bus is the 84 and I use it two or three times a week to get to The Galleries. This service keeps getting extended (last time it was to serve both Barmston village centre and the bottom of Barmston after the 83 was axed) and now GNE are proposing to extend it to Brady Squre on the way to The Galleries. At this rate the bus is going to be taking close on 30 minutes to get from Concord to The Galleries (I get on the bus one stop further along the road from Concord). I've lived where I live now for 19 years and this service (under its various numbers of W2, W2A, M2, 82 and now 84) has taken longer and longer to get from Concord to The Galleries. It used to be a 17 minute journey during the day back in 2003, it's now effectively been almost doubled in time taken to get to The Galleries.
Little Pinks 82
- Unfortunately, the number of customers using this service isn’t enough to cover the costs of operating it, and so Go North East would no longer be able to operate this service. We are in discussions with Nexus about alternative options available.
Sadly, this service has just never taken off. Every time I see it going through Washington Village it's close to empty. It's a service that has been, in part, pieced together by taking parts of the 84 and 85 bus routes, the parts of the routes that saw fewer passengers get on / off the bus. It's unbelievable to think that Washington Village could be left with no bus service at all. That was a part of the route that the 84 used to cover until last year until the part of the route in Barmston was extended after the 83 was axed. Surely GNE should have seen last year that this service route was a non-starter.