(09 Apr 2026, 10:53 am)Busadvocate wrote I assure you I want to be ambitious for all public transport (but my user name is because I think buses tend not to get the attention they deserve). I agree with the concept of bus services (etc) as part of the infrastructure of society. I do hope the conversation in forums like this is ambitious, but realistic - otherwise it can only lead to disappointment. And there are other things that are equally part of community infrastructure that also need funding (youth services? the Further Education sector? higher quality nursery care? etc etc), so it is impossible to duck choices.

I was taking "places" to mean communities. Even in rural Northumberland, I still think it is fair to contend that (almost?) all places with no regular service have only very small populations and would be very expensive to serve, especially with a meaningful impact. (See also TeesFlex - a good level of service but unsustainably expensive ...) 

To keep the thread grounded in examples, I have investigated the places you named (have a look on Streetview).  

• Tursdale: about 25 houses. Old Quarrington: about 10 smart houses (down a dead end road..).   
  
• Hett: about 60 houses - so I agree is one of the modest number of places perhaps unlucky to have nothing - but it would be highly subsidised/low demand.
  
• Fishburn: is a large village, but is not "cut off altogether" - it has 3 buses per hour, though still room for feeling it lacks links (restore X21? Extend X22 to Middlesbrough? Both problems of crossing NECA boundaries ...)
  
• Sunderland Bridge: about 15 posh houses and almost all within Active Travel's standard walk distance from stops with 9 buses p hour!
  
• Washington: I confess its a place I struggle to get my head round; but clearly road layouts are difficult. Somewhere I would have ambitions to serve better.
  
• Aykley Heads (Durham). Most of the employment is within a modest walk of excellently served bus stops. The houses are an example of what I referred to, but not easy. (Perhaps 61 could go there instead of its current route?)
  
• Serving major employment better would also be on my wishlist. 
  

Basically, my point is there will be a need to choose, as having all the toys in the shop is simply not fundable. I hope a higher priority is given to enhancing services at places like Fishburn/ Washington and issues like serving major workplaces better than doing much at the likes of Old Quarrington or Hett or the rural hamlets deep in Northumberland etc).

To respond to some of the Co. Durham points:

• Tursdale has Integra61, a huge Amazon warehouse and Tursdale Business Park, plus the 25 houses you mention. Integra61 was said to create 6,000 jobs, but Amazon alone has around 1,500 (as I recall), yet not even a service for shift times.
  
• Sunderland Bridge, I presume you're calculating distance based on the public footpath? This isn't accessible, so it's actually more than double the distance to the nearest southbound stop. You could of course resolve this by placing an additional stop.
  
• Hett and Old Quarrington, although differing in size, are examples of places that need a bespoke service due to narrow roads. Durham Cathedral has the same problem and that has a solution, in limiting the size of the vehicle that is used.
  
• Fishburn - I should have specified that it's been cut-off in that it doesn't have a reasonable bus service. Losing the X12 was a big issue there.
  

I don't think you can compare the two. Having a toy is a luxury, whereas having a bus service shouldn't be. I don't think it's about ending up disappointed either. We should see this change as an opportunity to correct some of the wrongs over the last 40 years. 

We've somehow become ingrained in this belief that someone can sit in an office and decide whether or not it's worthwhile to service this village or that village as a black and white decision. Yes, it would be very difficult to provide a regular bus service to some places, but that's where there needs to be more creativity and bespoke solutions put in place - DRT being one of them, an extension of the Nexus TaxiCard scheme being another. For somewhere like Old Quarrington, having a shopping service once or twice a day would be a lot better than having nothing.

As I've said, I don't advocate for everywhere having a bus service every 10 minutes, but clearly having hamlets or villages of residents without a connection to the wider world is unacceptable. We need to be moving away from the model that every bus service is measured on P+L, rather than the wider economic, social and health benefits., Isolation, for example, will likely cost us more in the long run through adult social care.

As a transport leader once said - If you fight, you won't always win, but if you don't fight, you will always lose.