(28 Oct 2023, 10:29 pm)Ambassador wrote Indeed, Birtley gets mentioned a lot but outside the core Durham Rd area, most of the growth in Birtley is private housing (Northside etc) Even towards Newcastle Bank, it’s historically private ownership (long bank, northdene, crathie, hollys) with space for two car families
If Birtley hadn’t have by chance been positioned on Durham Road it would probably be getting a 30 min frequency,
Admit this is a bit off topic but not sure I agree with that, there's a fair amount of social housing / low car usage housing in the Portobello area which has an absymal service.
The 21 imo is way overbussed between Birtley and CLS aswell.
I'm not going to delve into the land of suggestions here but there's an 82 which serves all these areas and a 21 which is overbussed south of Birtley. Bolt the things together imo, then you'd have a decent destination at both ends of the route and open connections up to Washington across all of Birtley and connections to Newcastle in the opposite direction. It's the exact sort of network Arriva has up here pretty much. Not to mention the Low Fell to Washington connection which in turn then opens up the Low Fell to Sunderland connections, or Nissan, or Houghton Le Spring and so on.
The 21 is crying to be split up against like the Arriva 43/44/45, X10/X11 or X21/X22 imo which it was in the past. One thing I'll always give credit to Arriva is literally everywhere in Northumberland which they serve has a direct link to Newcastle.