Please revise the decision to cancel the 11 and 11a bus services from Blackhall Mill to Newcastle. This affects so many members of our local community and people now have great difficulty in getting to work, school and local services.
Why is this important?
On 24th July 2016, Go North East will remove the 11 and 11a bus services. These buses provide vital links between villages in Western Gateshead with Newcastle City Centre, including Blackhall Mill, Chopwell, High Spen, Greenside, Crawcrook and Ryton.
Without the 11 and 11a services, local people face severe difficulty when travelling around their local area. I commute from Ryton to the Scotswood Road area of Newcastle every weekday. With the removal of the 11 and 11a buses in July, there will be NO direct bus from Ryton and several surrounding villages to Newcastle City Centre.
Go North East have proposed to replace the cancelled services with a new 10x route, which will serve local areas 'at peak times' only: as an example, the new 10x from Ryton to Newcastle is only running at the 'peak' time of 7.25am - 7.55am! Go North East evidently believe that offering a replacement bus service for only 30 minutes a day on week days is enough. This is incredibly unreasonable: customers have found that the early morning 11 and 11a services are currently so well-used that it is often impossible to find a seat on the bus!
The reason that Go North East give for axing these essential services is that 'the number of people travelling on the service 11 as whole means its not viable to continue running it.' (sic) With the forthcoming proposal of more than 400 new homes in Ryton alone, Go North East should be investing in our local area, not removing vital services from long-suffering residents!
Please sign this petition and encourage your friends and family do the same - hopefully, Go North East will realise how important these services are to our local communities and scrap plans to remove them.
