(10 Sep 2015, 7:44 pm)BusLoverMum wrote I used to live in Gateshead so caught the X66 quite regularly, particularly when I worked near Rowlands Gill for a few months. To be honest, it's always been frequent enough that you don't even stop to think that it runs to a given timetable unless it's so badly delayed that 3 come at once. And that was without the handy little shortcut that some runs can take. Delays were always down to traffic, rather than the buses themselves so I can't see what problem having streetlites would cause. Yes there are single deckers that can carry a handful more passengers, but they cost more to run. In the entire history of the service, the bendy buses were relatively short lived and, I suspect, expensive to run half full.

Yeah you've got the problem with the 'rest of the year' when it's not bursting with high capacity vehicles not really being tested. Having said that on my (now limited) day out recently, I caught an X66 that was early August, middle of the day and it was rather heaving on a Streetlite then, so Christmas could be interesting to see how they will cope. I dare say dual door would probably be a better setup to aid loading/unloading times which would help, but this would come at a cost of capacity at the same time. The only way to solve it would probably be increase the frequency but would this come at a higher cost (resources wise) than upping the vehicle size? How would this add up across the year?