(27 Oct 2022, 2:41 pm)Rob44 wrote TBH i do agreed with you but.... in my option ( and it mnens nowt) there is nothing on team valley ( retail bit) that you cant get to more easily on the bus to metrocentre / gateshead/ toon. Ok you could buy your new sofa at scs but you could alos do that at the metrocentre.
Work is different, although i would imagine anyone taking a job down there without the means of private transport would look at how they are going to get there. I'm sure a few on here can guess where live and work within the gateshead area from my previous posts. If i want to get to work its a 30minute trip via 2 buses ( if they connect and on a evening after 7pm its 1 hour 30. Its 12 minutes in the car. When i first started work i lived in Hazlerigg so had the commute of bus, metro bus or bus to town then bus again. I didn't care that it took me an hour as its the only way i could do it. Now, if i had to do it due to whatever reason It would kill me to use the bus .
And its because of the shite public transport down there, that bus lanes and priority measures (funded by the public purse) have been put in to place, why they started turning the 93/94 behind Mothercare (rather than outside McDonald's), the never-ending works/widening schemes on the A1 and the inevitable delays to the few buses that do exist - due to the huge numbers of cars on Kingsway...
Factor all that in and then look at the fact people can get there OK from Felling, Heworth or Beacon Lough - but people can't get there easily from Lobley Hill, Saltwell Road, Birtley or Kibby, then regardless of who the operator is; then there's clearly issues.
And that goes back to the whole discussion around pre 86 services vs post 86 services.
There's still plenty of people needing and wanting to be at places like TVTE. Except the public transport offering hasn't evolved.
...Despite the Coal House getting knocked down, Retail World appearing on the old waggonway and a dynamic shift in the type of work available down there.