(06 May 2020, 1:19 pm)Kuyoyo wrote The idea behind Tees Flex was to give areas that don't have a regular bus service a link to either the nearest location to connect into the Teesside network or a direct link to their nearest supermarket/hospital/town centre. Hence the restrictive Hartlepool zone - those are 'secondary' destination. The only 'primary' ones in Hartlepool zone are Hart (which now has the hourly Arriva 57), Elwick and Dalton Piercy. Wynyard also falls in the Hartlepool zone (as well as the Stockton/Darlington zone - the only example of a cross-zone location). Some of the 'Secondary' Destinations do leave something to be desired however - people in Wynyard and Wolviston wanting to go into Billingham Town Centre can't book that as a journey but they can travel to Billingham Railway Station. Another one - Summerville Tesco is listed as a 'secondary' destination but doesn't have one of the 'Bus Station' icons on the map (it's only recently been included in the zone as well!) and at one point after the launch, North Tees Hospital wasn't included as a destination - making it the only hospital not included originally.
Yes I understand the principle of Tees Flex. I’m just not understand how it is the simple solution of improving access to North Tees if passengers are required to make a journey to a limited choice of secondary destinations to commence a journey. The only way to make this suggestion work would be to make all of Hartlepool a primary zone with North Tees as a secondary destination. This then would require a change in the tech to prevent people making journeys wholly within the primary zone (I.E Intra-Hartlepool journeys).