(01 Feb 2025, 11:01 pm)Andreos1 wrote Why would cars go the long way round to get to a central point? 
I'd argue the majority probably won't bother and would find something or somewhere else to go.

To go back to my point about bus lanes not working, I'd love someone to be able to answer and provide evidence that:
A) passenger numbers increase as a result of priority measures being introduced (correlation between them being introduced in the early 90s in Gateshead vs declining passenger numbers would prove otherwise). 
B) journeys are now quicker as a result (again, purely anecdotal evidence would say otherwise - check out timetables in the bygone section vs current timetables).
C) There's a return on investment for the LA funding the changes.
D) Car usage is decreasing because of the inconvenience.

(Edited) Personally I wouldn't look at our area for bus lanes as the vast majority of them are short and have no use or are in the complete wrong place ie around the angel so it's not a good place to look at. Personally I'd be looking at places like Brighton where there's a full network of them joined up and well connected and it works.

Another example would be the Glider services in Belfast which have shown 7-8% modal shift which is a fair bit (https://www.route-one.net/features/how-b...t-success/).

Cars should not be using Gosforth High Street, Low Fell, West Road etc to get into Newcastle and should be mostly car free bar very local journeys and there's no reason why we couldn't have a similar system to above in terms of the bus priority, whether you wanted to go the full hog then that's your choice but they'd be successful on those corridors. It's not as if there's no bypasses for most of them anyway.

It's no longer to travel to Newcastle via Cowgate, if there was no traffic btw, since Gosforth is slow and that route is mostly 40mph+ but the 15 minute queue at Cowgate changes that. That's where the priority should be and it should even be BSIP funded with the caveat of reducing traffic in Gosforth where it really matters then you could look at things like the Glider in Belfast or whatever you fancied. The routes are already there 43/44/45/extra one to Great Park? The 21 from CLS to Newcastle is another corridor which screams where it would work aswell.

These would arguably be better value for money than spending £1bn+ on a Metro serving Washington outskirts heck add another route from Washington Galleries (where people want to be) direct to Newcastle via Sheriff Hill another corridor prime for it.