(08 Mar 2016, 10:25 pm)Adrian wrote The X12 had similar issues, and those between Sedgefield and Durham suffered as a result, losing a third of their hourly services.
You can only cut so much, before you lose sight of your purpose as a business - to serve the customer.
But if people want to go south of Cramlington on the X8 route from Blyth during the day, they can easily get the X9 (or even the X6/X10/X11) to Cramlington then change. Splitting the route would solve many of the reliability issues and even open an opportunity to improve the other services too.
No route would be cut as such, it would just be split to improve the reliability with added time given.
Look at the old Diamond routes that GNE had and yes, there is teething issues with the Northern 6 which GNE should address during the April changes. The 43/44 ran fine between Durham and Stanley but anything North of Stanley was making the route out to become a Bermuda Triangle. GNE tried and tried and tried adding time to the 43/44/44A but they got to a stage that no matter what they did, the reliability wasn't going to improve with all the traffic blackspots between Stanley and Newcastle with the passengers between Stanley and Durham having to face major delays as a result of such incidents.