The overflow car park is now officially the 'staff car park' and Intu are very liberally handing out fines to staff parking in the wrong area.
I don't think Newcastle as a City needs a park and ride. It's not that bad to get into unlike Durham which struggles in the case of being old and compact and whilst the road layout changes soon to appear around Central Station will cause chaos, they still won't merit radical changes.
Newcastle is relatively small compact City but with a big Cityfeel but it's got thousands and thousands of car park spaces in both council and private hands available to people to use and you can park somewhere like Times Square and be by the Monument in 10 minutes and St James in the same time, the compact nature of the City doesn't lend to park and ride.
RE: Go North East