(19 Jul 2022, 6:19 pm)Unber43 wrote I don't think people have realised how much the 58 numbers have actually went down, it could be cos of the copious amount of buses which go around their route.
But yeah, Bendys were quite busy, Versas a fair amount of people and the deckers are just dead, they maybe have 20 seats free during peak times. The 58 to me is no longer a flagship route, and I don't really think it was very really one
I would say the service changes last year where the 51/52 were extended from Gateshead to Newcastle in order to cover a loss of links on certain parts of the route when the Quayside section was switched over onto the 53/54 thus resulting in a bus Every 7/8 Minutes between Newcastle & Heworth, on top of having the 56/57 up to Deckham has to have an impact as there is a Bus Every 3/4 Minutes on the latter alone to which I have seen a 51/56/57 & 58 running together due to how tight those timing's are. Furthermore i'd say the 58 only needs a single decker due to how many empty seats there are and I can also see the extension from Heworth to Amazon also impacting passenger numbers on the 4.