(03 Aug 2023, 7:25 am)R852 PRG wrote If you're suggesting I have some sort of agenda in favour of Go North East, you're mistaken. I could sit and absolutely tear them to pieces if I so desired. On this matter, however, I think they should be commended. 
Seemingly nobody can identify their strategy of network reconstruction in North Tyneside. 

As for "leaving half of Birtley without a bus service", don't talk wet. It's not as if, when the 82 was tendered out, those areas went without a bus service. Besides, no residential address in Birtley was ever more than a five minute walk from a stop served by the 21.

The tax payer should not be paying for bus services so the big boys can pay their shareholders. 

It's a completely broken system. Half of Birtley was 100% left without a bus service and it's much further than 5 minutes from Portobello to Durham Road down a massive bank aswell. 

The 25 isn't commercial either. 

North Tyneside needs to be franchised and completely redone with Metro integration in mind. People in some areas, ie. where the 351 goes, will cry that they don't have a direct bus anymore but their clearly not using it anyway so arguably a 30 minute service to somewhere like Northumberland Park with proper integration would provide a proper service. 

There's loads of areas which are the same Backworth being another as the 54 clearly doesn't work either just to pick one out. From there duplication can be removed there's still no need for 6 buses from Blyth to Whitley Bay for example but it's all down to well I'm not dropping and nor am I problem. 3 BPH is more than enough along there, if not too much if you interworked it with the X7. 

The whole area just needs someone to sit down and start again rather than botching, botching and botching. It's basically still the deregulation network with botches everywhere and it's broken.