Nexus and North Tyneside Council would like to thank everyone for their input into the Accessible Bus Network Design (ABND) project. The feedback and comments we received are helping us to shape our plans, and without them our network would be much less effective.
This consultation took place between March 2010 and August 2010 across the four districts of Tyne and Wear involved, and concentrated on the ‘subsidised’ services and the changes we propose for them. This consultation gave you the opportunity to tell us whether our proposals meet your needs for local bus travel, and the feedback received is helping to ensure that the final network design will best meet the needs of local residents, within the funding available.
In a consultation programme agreed between Nexus and the Council, information was provided to all stakeholders on our list and to venues such as libraries, as well as on our websites, and public events were held across the district. In North Tyneside, 199 questionnaires were received, together with 115 emails and letters. More than 500 people attended public events, and almost 1100 people viewed detailed proposals for North Tyneside on the Nexus website.
In March 2009 the Integrated Transport Authority (ITA) approved the revised Tyne and Wear Bus Strategy. The Accessible Bus Network Design Project was set up as an outcome of this with the objective ‘to design an accessible bus network for Tyne and Wear that delivers the best possible accessibility for local residents within the funding available, and assists in the achievement of the accessibility targets contained within the Bus Strategy’.
Around 90% of all buses in Tyne and Wear are operated as ‘commercial’ services, where the routes, frequencies and vehicle types are decided by the bus operators. The remaining 10% are subsidised by Nexus using money including that provided by the councils in Tyne and Wear. Nexus can pay for the whole of a route or just part of it. It can also pay for a route at certain times of day (often early mornings, evenings and/or Sundays) when there are fewer passengers but the route fills an important social need.
The following section summarises your feedback and comments on our draft design for these subsidised routes. Whilst we won’t be able to respond to every one of the comments, all feedback has been reviewed and will be considered when finalising the network design.
At this stage we are not able to take the next step and determine a final network design. This will be published after the implications related to funding for public transport, of the Government’s forthcoming spending review, have been evaluated.
