Michael Euston
A point of view from a 'random' that lives in Brotton. Arriva provide a good service with the 5 that gets me to Skelton, Guisborough and Boro. And the X4 with the new Evoras up and down to coast to Whitby, Saltburn, Redcar and Boro again. What's missing is a link to Skelton retail park with Asda, Aldi, B and M and others. The Stagecoach buses miss the High Street and go up the bypass before dropping in to the hospital grounds. Fine for me but not so more elderly and frail residents. A simple re-routing of the 1 and 2 and the service would be used more. Same for re-routing through North Skelton and New Skelton. It costs £500,000 a year so surely it makes sense to make it more reachable. As for James Cook Hospital for residents of East Cleveland. I swap buses at Ormesby. But would it be so difficult for every other 5 to go down Marton Road and one of the 63s go down the 5 route?

It’s a-lot more difficult than you’d think due to timing differences (5 minutes on a Sunday daytime for example), you’d essentially be ruining 2 routes for the sake of a connection that would realistically wouldn’t be used too much, and an easier connection for James Cook for those challenged mobility wise would be to swap onto a 28 at Guisborough.

(7 hours ago)Michael Euston wrote A point of view from a 'random' that lives in Brotton. Arriva provide a good service with the 5 that gets me to Skelton, Guisborough and Boro. And the X4 with the new Evoras up and down to coast to Whitby, Saltburn, Redcar and Boro again. What's missing is a link to Skelton retail park with Asda, Aldi, B and M and others. The Stagecoach buses miss the High Street and go up the bypass before dropping in to the hospital grounds. Fine for me but not so more elderly and frail residents. A simple re-routing of the 1 and 2 and the service would be used more. Same for re-routing through North Skelton and New Skelton. It costs £500,000 a year so surely it makes sense to make it more reachable. As for James Cook Hospital for residents of East Cleveland. I swap buses at Ormesby. But would it be so difficult for every other 5 to go down Marton Road and one of the 63s go down the 5 route?

Like I said, the bus from Brotton to Skelton retail park is a fair shout, and worth a try if it can be done without too much hassle. However, realistically every time a village in the area asks for a bus service and get one, they don't use it in any great numbers. Brotton may turn out to be different than Loftus, Skinningrove and Easington whose residents all were demanding a bus there, but when they got one don't bother using it.

Re-routing one of the 5's to serve Marton Road would just create a mess of a timetable and have a knock on effect on the stops it would miss down Ormesby Bank. Many more people use all those stops than would want to go from East of Guisborough to Marton Road or the hospital.

If you live in Guisborough, you can already get a direct bus to the hospital. Anywhere else you just change at Ormesby roundabout, Redcar, Guisborough or Middlesbrough Bus station to go to James Cook. Plenty of options.

Imo the 1/2 are completely useless for links to a supermarket.

They're every 2 hours so completely unusable for most people as if you miss a bus your going to be standing around for a long time.

People might aswell just get on the bus to Guisborough or Redcar instead where you have similar shops.

Looking at the times it appears it's either 20 minutes there or 2 hours 20 minutes there. Both completely unrealistic either being too short or too long.

I've often thought about this? What do you do at Skelton Asda/Aldi when you've done your shopping. No-one spends 2 hours doing their shopping, do they?

Regarding the rest of the services? Yes it would be difficult in the present operating conditions to effect connections between services. It did used to work back in the day when we had the "four bus stops" referred to. Things were easier (better) from an operational viewpoint and drivers were told to wait for connecting services-to a point.

The majority - I'd say as high as 90% of people living in East Cleveland and dependant on public transport have gotten used to Arriva and what's provided. They've made/make plans accordingly. Sadly the remainder having been offered the various options mentioned didnt use them sufficiently and lose out. Things aren't gonna change anytime soon!

The current timings of the 1 / 2 depend which you use - if you're coming from Easington, Loftus Zetland road or Liverton Mines you get into Skelton on the service 1 for example at 09:36 and can get the 2 back from there at 10:46, so that's pretty good.

Of course that doesn't suit everyone, if you have to walk to the bank top side of Loftus with shopping, but that's just another example of not being able to please everyone.