(18 May 2023, 7:36 am)Rob44 wrote You see i don't agree. I think most passengers will put up with a long route.... its when that route takes EVEN LONGER when they decide to lop routes togeter.  Take the Q£ - when ive been waiting for this bus to the rigg it used to be packed heading towards Gosforth high street but now it goes via Jesmond its definitely not picking up as many passenger, but if it had went that way in the beginning then no one would complain as its the route its always taken.  Same with "new" buses. GNE x-lines - you get used to it, then ex London or 03 plate decker's appear on it and your going to think well this is carp!!  But if those ex London and )£ plate decker's were on from the start you wouldn't complain as you would have nothing to compare them against.

The thing is though that's part of the problem, if you had rapid transport then people are happy to change so you can create much much better frequencies and timetables by having actually less vehicles doing corridors, no-one on the other hand will change from a bus to a bus.

To pick that corridor out and hypothetically you had unlimited funds as I don't really think it's feasible this one but just to explain. Let's say this Metro or Tram line was built below:



You'd create interchange stations at Cramlington, Regent Centre and Great Park. From there stuff like the Q3 would be little loop services just serving the Great Park and nothing else and because you do this the tram/metro can be frequent because of everyone using it but actually less vehicles than we have now.

At the same time the 43/44/45/X46/Q3/35/X9/X10/X11 mostly would be withdrawn and pushed onto little local services running every 10 minutes or so. Okay there's a change now but you've got a 10 minute frequent service with a change at destination point you might want to go and that's how public transport works pretty much in every country in Europe bar the UK.

In reality you've cut the frequency through Gosforth from 20+ buses to 12 Metro's / Trams and at the same time gave a much much better service which will be quicker for most and more frequent and made Gosforth a nicer place in the process.

A really good example is Lyon especially on the Metro Line D where you can see it working in full glory in particular at Gare De Vaise - https://www.tcl.fr/sites/default/files/2...092020.pdf