(Yesterday, 10:54 pm)Nerd4321 wrote I have to massive disagree here
The 51 when it was proposed to be cancelled was ridiculous. When i emailed about them sending the 51 to Northumberland Park to at least give people the link to Whitley Bay. There response was
"We cant extend it to Northumberland Park due to not enough time and we can't allocate more buses to it"
Which to me was put as it was gonna be what the 51 on an evening by GNE became where it would only be one bus between Newcastle & Holystone. Nexus took massive backlash with that consultations receiving more than 250 response saying no to it. People use the service beyond Holystone and with nothing between Whitley Bay to Newcastle connecting them areas
You have to remember they may look to dupe the 57/57A but once the 351 gets to Sainsbury's it doesn't see the 57 again till Whitley Bay while it serves them estates. 350 was only introduced to try ease passengers on the 351. Clearly in a way this has failed as the 350 is busy now which makes zero sense on why these two are nexus funded services. It makes no sense they are this busy yet still funded by nexus
People were annoyed as they consultation was to cut the 51 after Holystone and route the W2 near Earsdon which leaves a massive chunk out where no bus services connect each other. No reason nexus chucked it in the bin as that was the worst decision a company can make. Neuxs didn't think it through and since then all consultations have been thought through a lot more.
Neuxs can only do so much with there services but the big 3 can do whatever they want and nexus have no say. Like the example with the Q3 & 35 on Osborne Road.
Nexus made it as the 35 would serve Osborne Road to please people in Great Park a quick route to town for the Q3 to be taken out but gne didn't and we ended up with this mess. Where gne got greedy and decided yea let's keep Osborne road
But I believe GCT should buy the long mmc when they lose the P&R and chuck them on the 350/351 as they badly need it
Nah I don't disagree but personally just think it should be split into 2.
So you'd have a:
Northumberland Park - Newcastle service
and
Northumberland Park - Whitley Bay service integrating the W2
It means you can then have appropriate vehicles and frequencies for both halves of the route and the top route imo would be quite attractive to commercial operators. If someone like GNE took it on and feels like it's attractive commercially since it compliments their Coast Road services then that's money free'd up to do stuff elsewhere.
Btw the 350 only exists as the 351 is too slow to run with a PVR 4. It's why I've always said they should bin off the W2 and just make the 351 every 30 minutes the full route with a PVR 5. The 351 imo is the more important half of the route if you're keeping the full route and the you'd have an extra 10 minutes or so every run if you fancied extending it somewhere, ie. Northumberland Park.