(16 Jul 2026, 7:22 pm)SN69 ZRC wrote 353/4/6 have no reason to serve Northumberland Park Interchange, though. It's only a minute walk from the station to the nearest bus stop outside Herons. The Metro is the best form of transport in Northumberland Park anyways, so most people from Moorside Estate walk past the bus stops to get to the Metro anyways without issue. No one's going to be that bothered about walking a minute for a bus. You've also got to think about people already on the bus, passing through Northumberland Park to get to their destination. The route is already lengthy enough as it is, so passengers aren't going to want to be on a bus for hours doing circles everywhere. 354 already has two part of the loop where it backtracks on itself doing
circles (Killingworth and Quorum).

My ex whom I was with from 2020 to 2025 lived in Northumberland Park, and I have to say transport in that area is so much better than it was when I first got together with her in 2020. Back then, we only had the 19, 53, 54 and the extremely pointless original 359 by GCT just doing loops of Backworth. Now, there's the upgraded 19 (which also now replaces parts of the old 359 route), 350, 353, 354 and 356. There's new links to Monkseaton, and a quicker option to Killingworth. All buses are pretty frequent combined. The 54 (now 354) only ran during the daytime, Monday to Saturday. Now it runs all day every day.

Onto your "400 meters walk" argument, that's not exactly "miles" is it?

While I do agree bus links are below par, your points are focusing on the wrong factors. Nearby passing buses don't need to serve the interchange, however the 22 should indeed be extended to terminate at Northumberland Park to give that extra link to Silverlink, and beyond to Wallsend. If the 22 served Northumberland Park, that would make it quicker than the Metro to get to, not only Howdon Metro, but other places in Howdon where Metro passengers may be travelling to.

See I disagree 400m is a long distance. We've created a broken network that we have long winded around the world like the 354 and 356. They should be connecting to the hub. 



People doing these connections should be changing on the Train/Metro to the stage that the 350/351/356 shouldn't exist - at all, East of Northumberland Park. The above is the sort of network which should exist with people changing onto the Metro to complete their journeys with another potential change at Four Lane Ends if you want Quorum or the Freeman.

If these services are decent frequency say every 20 minutes each, it's a hell of lot quicker than an hourly bus service around half the North East. The problem is there's zero tickets between them so it becomes expensive very fast.

Heck they're even substantially quicker than the 308/309 in parts if you're nowhere near Haymarket ie. Central.