(23 Sep 2014, 6:50 pm)gordondack wrote The service will be running as a private service presently. The reason it's running is the severe lack of car parking space within the npower site now that it is the only site for the North East. Peterlee will cease to exist by the end of this month so staff from across the North East will travel to Rainton. A park & ride service is the only viable option at present to acommodate the increase in staff housed within RaintonSorry to keep harping on about this. Sad as it sounds, I find the whole set up for the service quite interesting.
Due to varying shift patterns not everyone starts or finishes at the same times.
Yeah, I get the varying shift patterns - but if a car park is full for the majority of the day from early morning, the chances of it emptying enough to justify a decker operating every 15mins, is slim to nil.
The fact the 35a can leave Rainton Bridge carrying nowt but the driver (operating a 20min frequency) and the 20a can whizz through and not stop at all - ditto the the 923, tells me all there is to know about shift patterns and demands for public transport over the course of the day.
In addition, since Monday, I have seen 6100 four times (it may have been 6099 today, never noticed the fleet id), and I have seen no more than 1 passenger on board the bus (all at varying times of the day) on each of those occasions.
Granted, it will get a lot busier than that.
Also, there are two more 'restriction/advisory' road signs on the route - which I hadn't noted previously.
One prior to the left hand turn onto Black Boy Road and one on the entrance to Black Boy Road.
However, to turn this into a positive!
Demand for P&R will be higher today than previously - if only because of the huge crane parked outside NPower, offering bungee jumps. Not sure how many car parking spaces that is taking up, but it is a few!