(22 Jan 2021, 11:40 pm)L469 YVK wrote I strongly disagree with the Bedlington hub. All of Arriva's services are ran commercially 7 days a week, all day. Washington's services are run during the day only. There's a reason for that because no-one likes the hub and spoke network. There's nothing wrong with the network and imo it's the best network around in the North East as you can get from anywhere in SE. Northumberland to anywhere else in SE. Northumberland with a maximum of 1 change, trying doing that in Washington.
Attempt those changes and once the train comes along you can kiss goodbye to most people because they'll travel to the nearest train station and use that instead.
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A hub-spoke model would actually improve links whilst concentrating on the 'core' routes. More frequent services would run from Ashington & Bedlington to Cramlington which actually has a fairly decent offering in terms of shops, leisure etc. The current X22 is the "weak link" with the Bedlington - Newcastle section carrying the rest of the route.
A hub-spoke would look something like this
X31 every 15 mins: Newbiggin (hourly) - Ashington - Bedlington - Newcastle
Using letters for the rest as unsure of numbers
Route's A&B every 30 mins: Same route as 57 from Ashington to Cramlington then respective routes to Whitley Bay.
Route C every 30 mins: Same route as X22 between Ashington and Bedlington. Then via Nedderton & Nelson Ind Est to Cramlington.
Routes A/B/C would operate on a 10/20 frequency from Ashington and Cramlington with a 15 minute frequency from Bedlington.
And not forgetting the train, the X19 & X20 would provide strong competition too.
There's no demand for a bus from Bedlington to Cramlington though, there's no point forcing 15 minute bus services down there when no-one will use it. There's already a 30 minute service plus the 19 for people who want to use and none of them run in the evening and the other is subsidised all day.
You'll have some extremely pissed off customers curtailing the X22 and forcing them to change buses to get to Newcastle where they actually want to be.
Also the 57 isn't an Cramlington to Ashington bus service. The 57 is Cramlington to Whitley / North Shields it only goes up there for operational reasons, if GNE did (which won't happen) you'd be better merging the bottom half of the 57 onto the 11 which would please customers down here a lot more than 30 minute services upto Ashington where we don't want to be causing delays.
It's also a sneaky way for GNE to keep the subsidy for the 11 without it ever going out for tender.
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