(08 Aug 2022, 9:06 pm)Adrian wrote There's an argument that most out of town retail parks are designed in such a way that it ensures the car is king. Dalton Park is a perfect example of it; easy access from the A19, with a 'catchment area' stretching anywhere between Ryhope and the Tees Valley CA border. You're never going to be stuck for a parking space, and your car is on hand to load all your shopping into. IMO there's not much a bus can do to compete against that, and really it has a good service from it's catchment area in and around East Durham.

I don't visit Dalton Park much, but tend to spend a lot of time on buses going in and around the Arnison Centre. It's completely overbussed with the 21/50/64, and in my experience, only the 64 tends to pick up any passengers - and they're usually off by the time it gets out of Newton Hall.

Employment hubs like Doxford are a completely different kettle of fish, and if anything, it should be relatively easy to understand the travel needs of the businesses housed in those hubs. Doxford International's service is woeful, but given it's location and the access in and around it, how do you serve it more efficiently without pissing off users of existing services? Would those using the X10 want even more of a detour added?

You've made the point yourself recently that your mates were put off using the 4, because it now takes a detour around Follingsby, despite there not being many other practical ways of serving it. Again down to location, and then access coming off the A195 from Washington.

I agree, they probably are designed for the car user. But there's nothing to stop bus operators actually doing something about it and offering a bus service.
Not too dissimilar to what has been done at the Metrocentre - but just maybe from a wider range of destinations and not just have that conga of multicoloured buses travelling between Blaydon or Swalwell and Newcastle.

Dalton Park is the same. With a never ending conga of buses travelling back and forth from Sunderland.

Yet both places have seen investment in the road network in and around it. Why? Because car is king by natural selection or because car is king by default of a pretty naff bus network that makes it nigh on impossible to use.

We keep hearing that it's easier to create a business case for extending an existing route and under the current regime, I can see that X10 diversion in to Doxford being the 'fix'.
I think we all know it isn't the fix.
Just as the 4 isn't the ideal fix between Washington and Follingsby.