(04 Apr 2024, 9:07 pm)L469 YVK wrote You do have some really good ideas.
Ideally, Arriva's withdrawal in North Tyneside should've been the case of Nexus sitting down with GNE, Stagecoach and where applicable Arriva to try and work out a clean set of commercial (or subsidised where needed) local / secondary services. But no, same old duplication issues such as the 37 & 352 and 38 & 355 and 354 & X63.
Agreed, to me the bigger problem is the services are too infrequent. Like all of the 335/342/351/352/353/354 and 359 are pretty much useless in their current form and it's no surprise most of them are dead bar ironically the two sections they combine to be every 30 minutes.
It's no use being hourly, you've got a GP appointment at 12pm, the bus gets there at 12:05pm / 13:05pm - absolutely no use, leave the GP appointment, the bus is due 45 minutes. It's completely unusable and it's not like, sorry I need to leave now half way through an appointment.
It's not like they're serving the outback either, like I can understand the X14 to Rothbury being hourly it's a rural service so makes sense, these are services in a completely urban area. Excluding the 335, it's pointless anyway and the 359 which has always been subsisided, these were all commercial services at a 30 minute frequencies, and even more in the past, just pre Covid, it's not like we're talking about radical new routes either. Surely this is where BSIP should be going, not the 56.
The 351/354(355) is the biggest one, this was a route which got brand new Renowns, which we branded, in the late 90's and the 305 which used to be Deckers, yet now something has changed that they can't run at all...