(4 hours ago)Storx wrote See if I had a free card I'd swap everything round and do something like
342: Morpeth - Bedlington - East Hartford - Cramlington - Killingworth - Forest Hall - Wallsend (Every 30 Minutes)
43: Curtail at Cramlington
353: Extend to Airport
Having double deckers on the 43 between Cramlington and Morpeth is overkill as an understatement and the route over Cramlington overs nothing anyway as it's just a long X21/X22, depending where you are. There's no real lost links now the 19 exists which is just a faster 353 from Cramlington but there's a fair few new links generated.
You could make a case for flipping the 342 and 353 around in Forest Hall aswell tbh so the 353 serves ASDA and the 342 doesn't have to do a detour to turn around. Unsure how many at the Palmersville side use it though.
353 (53 back then) used to when the roundabout was there and was taken out of Asda which annoyed quite a few people who I knew who used to use the 53 to the asda since it was an easy quick shop to get to if they prefer asda. Which a lot did and didn't favor traveling and walking down to Asda at Cramlington
I always said they should have sent it back via the asda either u-turn in the asda car park or send it to the range roundabout further down to u-turn. I do wonder if this was to be brought back would it give some people the link back
(6 hours ago)V514DFT wrote I think the whole idea behind the 342 serving the Airport again was to reinstate what was lost when the 42A was withdrawn (before that the Nexus 353), but yes i get where you're coming from
Nexus and the Airport have had an odd history
I remember for (cant actually remember how long it lasted) but I remember before becoming the 42A the 353 was pulled out of serving the Airport all together and would just bypass it without serving it
I cant or still dont understand why they did it in the first place only for it to be sent back in there when the 42A was introduced then cut once again when the 342 replaced it but then again when the 342 was introduced it was just a quick way of saying "eh cut it from Airport"
Im assuming this was done cause the M71 was withdrawn so maybe driver hours wouldn't match up and they would have had to be taken off somewhere other than Wallsend so just decided to cut the Airport part. Mad nothing replaced it so the Airport Dinnington & Kingston Park link was left abandoned for 3 years before finally coming back