(14 Oct 2013, 9:46 pm)Washingtonian wrote Sorry I maybe didn't word my post correctly. I meant to ask if there had been a consultation for the whole Washington area and not just the Connections 4 service. I have seen no consultations for M2/3, W5/6 and Silver Arrows etc. I personally think GNE could do more with regards to finding out passengers needs and also what would encourage more people to use the bus. Its all very well them saying would you like Option A or Option B but is that really finding out what passengers want? Take Brady Square for example. If you wanted to get to Concord from Brady Square quickly as possible, would you really want to travel around half of Washington to get there? The W5 takes nearly half an hour for a journey that can be done in the car in around 5 mins. No wonder services like this don't have great loadings.
The Silver Arrows was consulted on only last year. I believe this was along with the proposal to terminate half of the M1 journeys at fatfield. The M2/M3 hasn't been done for a while afaik, but that was councillor driven so I'm lead to believe.
On the W5/W6, you're always going to have that problem. I could drive to Sunderland in 10 mins but it'd take 3x that by bus. Durham is 15 mins in a car or an hour by 2 buses. They'd argue you could get to concord in 10 mins anyway if you had a 5 min walk to the Vic and got the M1.