Will you be affected by the bus cuts across Newcastle and North Tyneside? Find out here
More than 30 bus routes are being cut across Newcastle and North Tyneside from today (27 March).
A huge list of service cancellations, timetable changes, and route diversions was revealed last month.
It comes as public transport services across the country face a funding crisis as ridership numbers are still below pre-Covid rates.
While the Government has since announced some new funding to help cover buscompanies' losses for another six months, and the North East's main operators pausing expected cuts in the rest of the region - that relief came too late to reverse the major changes that will hit Newcastle and North Tyneside passengers.
The move has been described as the biggest shift to local bus services in more than three decades.
Included among the plans is the removal of Walker and Wallsend from the route of the popular Q3 Quaylink bus, which prompted more than 1,000 people to sign a petition calling for it to be saved.
It has been feared that Arriva, Go North East, and Stagecoach could slash their mileage across the North East by 17% this year - with repeated warnings over recent months of reduced access into town or city centres and some outlying areas being cut off entirely.
Cllr Carl Johnson, the deputy mayor of North Tyneside, said that "people may have to walk further to find a bus, there will be less direct links to city centres and key employment sites and less frequent services across many routes".
Tyne and Wear Metro operator Nexus, which funds 10% of local services using government funding, had braced itself for cuts and announced a £4.5 million rescue package to reduce the anticipated impact.
Huw Lewis, customer services director for Nexus, said that today "marks the biggest single change to local bus services in 35 in years, due to cuts to route and services by bus companies who have seen their covid funding come to an end."
"We have linked the new publicly-funded services we are creating and taken on with the high-frequency bus routes commercial companies continue to operate. We have worked in partnership with the bus companies who have also revised their changes in places to better maintain local connections.
"The scale of the cuts means we are not able to provide a like-for-like replacement to every bus route that is being cut, but we can seek to keep local people connected. We are working with communities across Newcastle and North Tyneside to ensure that people know what is changing and what bus services are best for them."
Routes affected:
Service 1 (Go North East)
Service 1 (Stagecoach)
Service 6 (Nexus)
Services 6, 7 and 8 (Stagecoach)
Service 11 - also affects routes 41 and 41A (Go North East)
Service 13 (Stagecoach)
Service 18 (Stagecoach)
Service 19 (Go North East)
Service 32/32A (Stagecoach)
Service 33/33A
Service 35 (Stagecoach)
Service 41 and 41A (Go North East)
Service 42 and 42A (Go North East)
Service 46 (Arriva)
Service 51 and 51A
Service 52 (Go North East)
Service 53 (Arriva)
Service 62 (Stagecoach)
Service 333
Service335
Service 359
Service K1 and K2
Service M71
Service Q3 (Go North East)
Service W1, W1A and W3