(06 Jan 2022, 8:25 pm)OrangeArrow49 wrote 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 The long withdrawn services from Westerhope inspired my thinking.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.
But if these long withdrawn services didn't work in the period between 1990 and 2000 when the service existed outside of providing workers with transport to a place of employment; and at a time when car ownership was lower and internet shopping didn't exist; why might people suddenly want to travel to Blaydon now? West Denton has a Morrisons. Slatyford has a B&Ms (as well as a Lidl, a Wickes, and an Iceland). Kingston Park has a Home Bargains (and a whole host of other things). I can't see Boyes or Cooplands being that much of a draw where people would be coming to visit in their droves; and the rest of the shops in Blaydon Precinct are nothing to write home about either.
Creating infrequent links is not sustainable for a place like Blaydon. Now just supposing people did want to travel there to shop, would people really be prepared to go shopping then wait potentially hours for the bus back to Westerhope? Probably not, right? What would actually happen is people would travel into Newcastle then onto Westerhope in order to save time (and possibly sanity), thus doing the opposite of what the infrequent service sets out to achieve.
It's another dead horse suggestion I'm afraid.