(03 Jul 2022, 11:41 am)Washingtonian wrote There's been a lot of discussion on here about route numbers and how they are in a right mess, and I fully agree! You have the 1 serving North Tyneside mainly but then have the 2 serving Sunderland, the 4 mainly around Washington and Houghton, and then the 5 around South Shields. It's just all over the place. How about something this: -
North Tyneside - 1-50
Gateshead area - 50-100
Consett area - 101-150
County Durham area - 151-200
Washington Area - 201-250
Sunderland area - 251-300
South Shields - 301-350 etc
This is just an example. Ok there may not be 50 bus routes in one area but this would make room for any potential new routes for each area in the future. Routes to major attractions such as the MetroCentre should start with the letter of the main attraction it serves, so the X66 would become the M1 for example. All Xlines would be renumbered but retain the X at the start. Just a thought.
Personally I'd look at areas separately and each operator have their patterns and if there's duplicates then who cares along as they're not serving the same areas.
Arriva Northumbria already have a pattern pretty much
1 - 2 - Blyth Local Services
X5 - X11 - Blyth / Cramlington Expresses
X14 - X18 - Morpeth Expresses
X20 - X22 - Ashington Expresses
30's - Ashington Local Services
40's - Great North Road Services
50's - North Tyneside Local Services
60+ - Unused bar 306/308.
imo. it doesn't really matter if there's a 57 in North Shields and a 57 in Heworth as they never overlap and are so far apart, it's better than having numbers like 354 etc. It only comes a problem when you have a GNE 1 and Stagecoach 1 serving the same stops in Newcastle.
The biggest problems is corridors like through Grangetown in Sunderland where you have a 2/2A/39/39A/60/61 doing pretty much the same route but with no connection at all. It's the easiest marketing ever to say there's 15 buses an hour along there but they don't if they're serious about the BSIP add the 22/23 aswell and it's 19 buses an hour.