(07 Dec 2024, 5:00 am)ALavery wrote Absolutely buzzing to wait for my 61 and have three turn up at once because they all caught up to each other on Chester road! I have absolutely no clue why they have chose to merge the 61 with the 39? I can’t say anyone in murton/seaham is needing to be up pennywell for whatever reason apart from work and still keeping it at every half an hour too? Does this mean it wont call into park lane anymore then or will it do something like the 2? Into park lane on its way to pennywell and missing it out going to murton? Either way compared with the other changes the whole thing is a shambles. Nobody should have to wait an hour for a bus unless the ridership is destitute and it flys through the middle of nowhere, the least a service should be, combined frequency or not is every 30 mins. People aren’t going to be wanting to get the bus when the only one that takes them home is once an hour, this whole turn up and go thing is great if you live on a main road, but god forbid you live in an estate with houses like most people.
To be fair the 60-63 changes have been crying out to be done for years. It was an own goal having them all over the place when you look at other similar corridors like the Great North Road in Gosforth which is similar.
Mind not sure what the 'now' turn up and go nonsense is about since they've decreased the frequency from 14 buses an hour to 12 buses an hour. I'm not including the X6 here as that's also nonsense.
The Ryhope area is confusing though as I'm not sure what's doing what route. The 63 seems to be doing the 39 route. 61/62/62A is doing the 2/2A route though.
It feels like it's something like this:
(60 - Blue, 61 - Green, 62/62A - Purple, 63 - Red)
The 63 is very unclear whether it's doing the estates or not, but would make sense since it's no doubt getting the Solo's now, similar with the 61 rejoining at the Green or going via the bypass. I could be very wrong though.
Mind that said, one change I would've made is merged the 33 and 63 together and made a massive loop, would've been an easy change to make and open up new connections.