(15 Apr 2025, 4:33 pm)Shrek wrote I think a big part of it was that the company was a mess at the time. They were struggling badly for drivers to cover routes from Blyth and Ashington, nevermind having to cover the 50 routes as well.

As for the ideas you've put together for other routes. Diverting the 44 via Holywood Avenue and 45 via Jesmond wouldn't have been something they'd have been interested in. Those services return a profit for them in general, so making them longer and taking them through Jesmond which is a traffic nightmare could have been a risk to those services.

Realistically, they made some huge mistakes around the time, along with some huge misfortune with prices of materials rising due to the war in Ukraine as they looked to build a new depot in Newcastle. The actions they took made sense and they gave commercial data to other companies who then filled the gaps.

I'd assume COVID would've played a big part aswell? At the end they were basically building a depot in Byker for the 51/52/53/54/55 and it was never going to be feasible whatever way you looked at it since there was space opened at Blyth due to the X10/X11/306/308 reductions in PVR and the 1/2 moving to Ashington since they also had a reduction.

Something obviously went wrong at Ashington aswell, as it appears the last plan was to expand Ashington which would've been pretty cheap but for whatever reason it never happened. Was there ever anything said about that as that seemed to be the final nail for the Jesmond routes.

(15 Apr 2025, 10:13 am)logidoodah wrote I was sorting through some old stuff yesterday and came across some paper timetables from like 2015 - 2021. I saw the Arriva Jesmond services 51/51A/52/53/54/55 and I was quite nostalgic about them. So it got me thinking when they closed Jesmond Depot why did they not at least try to make them operate from Blyth & Ashington. There would've been people more outraged if GNE/SNE didn't step in with Nexus support on Evenings.

There were loads of ways you could've done it without majorly changing routes or having a lot of dead mileage for buses and driver changeovers...
Some ways could've been 

X7 - No Change to route but interworks with X9
X8 - No Change to route but interworks with the X10
X9 - Divert via Brunton Park 
X10 - Divert via Brunton Park

43 - Extend to Blyth following the X11 route. Longer journey to Newcastle but improves overall connections and doubles the freq. Map
44 - Divert via Hollywood Avenue.
45 - Divert through Jesmond to help with economic viability. Map
46 - Cancel this route. This route can mostly be covered by changing the X9 through Brunton Park 

52 - Extend this to Ashington from Cramlington and slightly change the routing after the Freeman Hospital. Map
53 - Extend this to Morpeth in place of the 43, this will then interwork with the 2. Kirkhill would be served by the 35 instead. Map
54 - Minor changes to routing. But interworks with the X7. Map
55 - Reduce the frequency to every 30 mins but upgrade the route from solos to singles (this could be interworked with X7/X8) Map
56 - renumber the 57A to better fit with the numbering
57 - extend both the 56/57 to North Shields via Marden covering the lost links from the 306. (But it is not essential, as the 1 also does this.)

306 - Terminate and do a loop of Tynemouth. There is no need for this service to go through to Whitley Bay just duplicates everything. Map
308 - Turn right after NT Hospital and divert through Marden to give better buses for this estate. Also differentiates it from the 309 better.

Below is a rough overview of the routes, I did not include everything mentioned such as the small changes to 306/308.

Personally if I was Arriva, I'd have looked at:

X7: No route changes, but potentially increase to every 20 minutes to compensate for the X8 and give some actual competition to the train as it's losing badly right now
X8: Withdrawn (See 52)
X9: Change to current X9 route via Bebside
X10: No Changes
X11: No Changes

43: No Changes
44: No Changes
45: No Changes
46: Withdrawn

51/51A: Withdrawn
52: Extend to Blyth via current X8 route from Burradon
53: Extend to Morpeth via 43 Route
54: Withdrawn
55: Dropped to every 30 minutes
57/57A: No Changes

52/55 Interwork

306: No Changes
308: No Changes

There'd be some areas lost but the likes of the 46/51/54 were a basketcase a long time before they dropped them. It's not too dissimilar to things now anyway as changing routes and extending journey times via irritating places like Gosforth has a massive risk of making the 43/44/45 corridor unprofitable as it does well atm.

I still think getting rid of the 52/53 was a big mistake as it opened up competition in areas where they had a monopoly ie. North of Killingworth and they were always pretty well used.