(03 Aug 2024, 8:34 am)DeltaMan wrote Tyne and Wear doesn't have remote communities. Those that are further out, actually have a decent service. Chopwell has six buses an hour. Murton in North Tyneside has two buses an hour. Even somewhere like Clara Vale has one bus an hour.
Although. I think you have a point with the frequent services getting money. I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't know of anywhere else in the country using BSIP money to enhance similar services.
Aye no arguments there but personally I'd argue Newcastle shouldn't be spending their money on buses, at all. Like personally it'd be much better spending Newcastle's money on speeding the buses up. If you could knock off 3 minutes off every bus heading through Gosforth you'd save PVR naturally anyway which could be used to increase frequencies. Repeat that with the other bottlenecks everywhere and you might have the 30/31/36 frequency increase with no cost.
I know some will say why should all the money be spent in Durham and Northumberland on bus service improvements but the simple answer is they need it more. That could be easily balanced by spending more on infrastruture in Newcastle instead. Personally I can't really think of anywhere in Northumberland where bus infrastructure really needs to be spent unless you want to waste it on pointless things.
I'm not sure why each pot has to be split evenly on each part, surely it would be better to split the pot evenly but with each part uneven. As someone in Northumberland, I'd rather the improvement money went to North Tyneside / Newcastle as the biggest delays to both our services are caused at Sandy Lane, Haddricks Mill and Whitley Bay.
I can't think of any frequent services either getting the money outside the North East, infact is there anywhere spending so much on services, I'm struggling to think of any.
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EDIT: Just done some research into this and was also surprised to find out that South Tyneside is actually the worst area with 54.2% at risk of social exclusion, followed by Durham and Northumberland. Newcastle is 6.5% in comparison.
(Page 98: https://www.transportforthenorth.com/wp-...ngland.pdf)
Hartlepool is shockingly bad aswell mind, but obviously outside the area, second worse in the North at 66.4%.