Residents living in the Wood Green sheltered housing in Bill Quay, Gateshead, are rejoicing this week over the return of a vital bus service.
With the support of Gateshead Older People’s Assembly, 60 local residents from Bill Quay and Pelaw met with Nexus to voice their concerns at the replacement of the number 68 bus service with a smaller taxi-bus.
Nexus then decided to re-instate the service after listening to the residents’ concerns, restoring important direct links to local shops, Heworth Metro station and a new link to Gateshead’s QEII Hospital.
Local resident, Jenny Gibbons, said: “The change to the service meant that many of the residents were not able to use the taxi-bus. Access to the taxi bus was restricted due to the steps on the bus and due to the size of the bus as it was full by the time it reached Wood Green. This left many of us isolated and unable to access local facilities.”
Funding from Comic Relief Older People’s Programme, is enabling Gateshead Older People’s Assembly to support local residents to engage in their local communities.
“Through the development of five local Branch Assemblies, we hope to encourage local people to look at issues in their neighbourhood and work together to help tackle the problems,” said Kerry Pattison, Branch Assembly Volunteer Co-ordinator.
Tobyn Hughes, Director of Customer Services for Nexus, said: “Nexus made changes to services in Gateshead following extensive consultation with local people into the future of local bus links it provides using funds from local authorities. As part of this the 68 around Woods Green was replaced by a taxi-bus service, the TB529, at the end of May.
“We keep all the services it changes under review and listen to what local people have to say about the services we provide. In this case it was clear we had not got things quite right. The taxi-bus was not big enough to meet demand along its whole route at some times of day, so we had another look at how we provide services.
“As a result we have made some changes on other parts of the 68 route, and used the precious few minutes this frees up to extend it once again to Woods Green from 31 July. This means local people will maintain the local link Nexus provides to shops and the Metro at Heworth, and gain from a new direct link to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.”
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