(18 Oct 2024, 7:33 pm)Storx wrote To be honest, I'm surprised they've never worked with Stagecoach about extending the 22 through to Northumberland Park. Should be only 1 bus and they'd have a very frequent 10 minute service, not to mention the benefits from other areas especially with the Northumberland Line. From someone on it, it would be quite a handy little connection if I needed to go to down that way for whatever reason. Be as quick than going around the Metro loop.
Cobalt is a right old dead end point for the route and it's no surprise they're pretty much always dead. Not to mention they could cash in when the Metro goes kaput every other week.
They could probably extend the 22 to Backworth, even if its only 1 an hour giving Backworth better and direct links
(17 Oct 2024, 9:25 pm)Storx wrote See I'd probably more services than that and personally go for something like this:
So you'd have
X38 - Orange Route (Every 20 Minutes) - Newcastle to Blyth Express via Cobalt
33: Light Blue (Every 30 Minutes) - Newcastle to Wiltshire Drive
34: Purple (Every 30 Minutes) - Newcastle to Whitley Bay via Holystone
35: Green (Every 30 Minutes) - Newcastle to North Shields via Meadowell
36/37: Dark Blue (Every 20 Minutes Each) - Newcastle to North Tyneside Loop
33/34/35/36/37: Every 5 Minutes Combined, Newcastle to Station Road
It's basically just going backwards and restoring the 315/316 in a new form and the 308 being reinvented but on the 309 corridor instead through Cobalt. With 3 less frequent services doing the niggly bits which are awkward (basically the old 305/307/355 in bits) so people in the likes of Verne Road aren't having to go on a magical mystery tour.
Plus you'd also get:
- Southern end of Norham Road where the new houses have a bus service.
- New houses at Holystone and also around The Range at Benton have an acceptable bus service to Newcastle (Hourly isn't that).
- Southend end of Monkseaton have a reasonable bus service (the W1 isn't that).
- New North Tyneside Loop linking most the major destination points which can be difficult currently, even if it's not the quickest (it's better than nothing).
Obviously not really possible without franchising, but imo it would be a much better service than what's there now. The duplication from New York to Blyth, in particular, is just stupid imo. It's crazy the amount of houses which have popped up in recent years and the bus services (as usual) just haven't turned up.
Pretty strong set of suggestions, but what about the dupe numbers, shame the numbering "system" is all over the place, otherwise you could of had 11,12,13,14/14A, the X38 is fine