(03 Aug 2023, 7:47 am)Storx wrote 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.

The current (since October 1986) arrangements are that operators chose what services they believe that they can run commercially (i.e make a profit, just like food retailers, dispensing chemists etc. do), and the onus is on the Local Authority to fill any gaps in provision that it deems necessary. That's how it is.

So nowhere should be left unserved (I don't think any part of Birtley is) provided that the Local Authority deem that a service is necessary.  

Bus services in many parts of North Tyneside have been heavily dependent on ENCTS passengers for many years (a generally older population) but these passengers have not returned in the same volume post covid - I've read that ENCTS passengers are only about 70% of pre covid numbers. No surprise then that some bus services in North Tyneside are a financial disaster......

I recall that service 19 was heavily subsidised by Cobalt (the only real reason for its existence being to serve Cobalt) but I think that subsidy disappeared long ago -  there always seem to be a lot of empty buildings in Cobalt, so I'm not surprised that the 19 isn't commercial.