(09 Jun 2023, 6:04 pm)Storx wrote The problem is it's ignoring the white elephant in the room and that's Whitley Bay to Holystone which isn't covered by any other services especially North Whitley Bay who want a route to Newcastle. Also no-one wants to go to Wallsend as there's nothing there, it's basically just the old 42 which failed miserably and is the 342 now (it used to serve Wiltshire Drive).Or.....an option to fully merge the 51 into the Coast Road network and shake off the 'Micky Mouse' route image
Wiltshire Drive is the most useless part of the 51 imo. The 6 buses from New York to Blyth is the biggest problem as it's complete overkill and most the time there's barely anyone on especially North of Whitley Bay - it's the same number of buses as the 21 which is one of the busiest corridors around.
If we ever get franchised services, hopefully we might see changes to make them actually more useful because there's no need for more than 4 buses max North of Whitley and even that's questionable.
- 305 (every 30 minutes / 60 minutes) - Basically same as 51, half hourly Newcastle - Holystone Park, hourly to Whitley Bay
- 306 (every 30 minutes) - Newcastle to Tynemouth, additionally serves Hadrian Park
- 307 (every 30 minutes) - via Cobalt instead of Hadrian Park
- 308 (every 30 minutes) - Newcastle to Whitley Bay only, additionally serves Battle Hill Drive and via Marden Estate rather than Hillheads
- 309 (every 30 minutes) - Same route as now
- X38 (every 20 minutes) - Blyth to Coast Road / Wallsend Dene (same as current 308) then non-stop to Civic Centre, St Mary's Place and Haymarket
* Every 6 minutes Newcastle - Station Road
* Frequent Newcastle - Battle Hill service
* Relatively even 4x buses per hour Newcastle - Billy Mill
* Relatively even 4x buses per hour Newcastle - High Farm
* New X38 will be popular with 306/308 intentionally slowed down to 'encourage' passengers to use X38