(01 Jan 2025, 6:42 pm)Shrek wrote I don't live on Great Park, but I do visit a lot and hear a lot of moans at bus stops. Going through Kingston Park is a constant nightmare and is only going to get worse when further developments are started. I drive through Kingston Park a lot and really prefer not to, it's guaranteed gridlock.

I'm not on the Great Park groups, so don't see the comments on there. But I really don't think the changes are overly popular or working.

I do think the suggestion about the old Q1/Q2 and making them free buses would be sensible though. And a merged x46 with the Great Park service would be sensible too.

I do live there, and the new arrangements are far better than the Q3. They’re far from perfect, and it’s often quicker for me to use the Arriva services to/from Brunton Lane and walk 20 minutes, but I’d take them any day over what went before.

The Q3 was very unreliable, took an absolute age because of the Jesmond diversion, and the frequency in the evening made it extremely unattractive. It was always quicker for me to catch an Arriva service and walk than it was to wait for a Q3 in Haymarket, unless a Q3 was already on stand when I arrived. The X47 is significantly better purely for having a usable half hourly evening frequency. 

There are some posts on the Facebook group from people unhappy with the service (mainly pensioners who have nothing better to do than complain that they’ve now only got an hourly bus to Gosforth), but the comments on those posts are generally always people who use the X47 to commute and note how much better it is.