(02 Sep 2023, 8:47 pm)Adrian wrote Having a bus station doesn't stop buses serving the heart of town and city centres, I'd say it actually improves their ability to do so, if done correctly.

You can use Durham as an example, seeing as they're temporarily without a bus station. North Road is chaos, and you can't get moved. The buses struggle to get on correct stands, and there's no space for layovers or welfare facilities for staff.

Attracting people back to town and city centres is a huge part of regeneration programmes, and transport stations play a role in that. A proper, dry and safe waiting environment, rather than being stood out in the rain.

I don't buy the argument that the bus stations are in the back end of nowhere. Sunderland Interchange is a very short walk from the Bridges, Eldon Square is part of Eldon Square shopping centre and a couple minutes walk from Northumberland Street, and Durham is a 5 minute walk from the market place.

I'm not sure why people can go to these centres, walk round for hours shopping, then suddenly lose their ability to walk the short distance back to a bus station?

I do think bus stations could be additionally complimented by running a city circular service in and out of the bus stations. This may provide additional support to the elderly and disabled. Durham has it with the Cathedral bus, Sunderland has it (to a degree) with the 700, but nothing in Newcastle.


Hopefully, one on the fix list, when we get franchising...!

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I have to disagree personally, I just find them generally a nuisance where they are. I'm all for proper interchanges, as I do think they are needed as you can't control timings but most the bus stations are just in the wrong place. Gateshead for example is a great interchange as it actually works with the Metro.

Park Lane on the otherhand is a long trek for example if someone is going to the Fire Station or Nando's which are both pretty reasonable reasons to be there and it's a grim waiting experience nevertheless anyway.

You have to remember your trying to fight against cars here who can go wherever they want, having a bus which can drop you off at one end of the street and then you can get on at the other end is literally a selling point. Having a bus station further away that the nearest car park is a massive negative, why bother using the bus? Not to mention if it's somewhere like Haymarket it's absolutely useless if you need to haul a case through to get on a train at Central.

Obviously we could go into the argument whether most these buses should exist AT ALL and people should be using an interchange to get onto a Metro train or tram, miles out of town, which takes you right into the heart of the city underground or on unique tracks with integrated ticketing and more frequent services on the connecting services rather than having 5 buses all trying to serve here there and everywhere but we live in Britain and public transport is just an inconvience to our politicians. It's pretty much how it works in every other country in the world and ironically Newcastle and Sunderland already have the Metro to do that, you just can't connect to it or it misses the most dense populations.