(06 Jan 2022, 7:49 pm)MurdnunoC wrote But why Blaydon? You have yet to provide a reason why anyone from the West End of Newcastle would want to travel to Blaydon. The only reason I can think of is that YOU want to travel to Blaydon, which is fine, but at least be honest about it rather than disguising it under the premise of wanting to create new links between places where very few people either end of the route wish to travel
While Metrocentre is a ghost of what it is once was, it still provides a number of things which Blaydon does not. So diverting the 6 or the 7 away from the Metrocentre would be commercial suicide for either service. My point about Metrocentre, which I think you misunderstood, is that there is little point in creating new Metrocentre specific services, shoppers specials if you will, like we might have seen in the past as shopping habits have drastically changed over the last decade or so.
On a final note, there were once services which operated between Blaydon and Westerhope (616/617/641/M16/M17). The reason they originally existed was to provide Stella Power Station with a bus service. Once that was demolished in 1990 ridership declined which led to the eventual withdrawal of the route sometime in the early 2000s, if not earlier. So to go back to my opening question: Why Blaydon? What has suddenly changed which would make folk want to go there?
In theory, because of the close proximity of Blaydon to West Newcastle, people might want to go there and whilst I do wish to go there and feel having to go into town and then back out is crazy and incentivises car ownership, creating new links, even infrequently, gives people the choice. The long withdrawn services from Westerhope inspired my thinking. Apologies I did misunderstand your post.