(19 Nov 2017, 6:59 pm)Malarkey wrote 9092 on the 4 yesterday evening - https://www.flickr.com/photos/adammalark...ed-public/

Must note on three separate occasions yesterday the driver of this did not pick up anyone at The Galleries on both the Houghton bound journey (15:00 from The Galleries) and the Heworth bound journey (16:00 from The Galleries) and finally the Houghton bound journey (16:35 from Concord), this was running over 10 Minutes late and despite the merc it was running in two with picking up all the passengers, the merc still came back to concord 2 minutes before it, this leads me to believe the existing timetable of the 4 wouldn't be achievable using the Streetlites if they were purchased for the 4 in the future, as for life expectancy I would say 10-12 Years.

The 4 is a bit of a nightmare for timekeeping though to be fair. Been on many of routes myself where the bus behind has ended up catching up and 'leapfrogging' the late runner that has been getting rammed with passengers and personally if I know that a bus is running way later than it should, I just wait for the next one as it'll be a heck of a lot quieter and quicker too!

One example is that when I got the 309 to Newcastle one Monday morning, I was waiting for the one that commenced a short trip from Whitley Bay (before the times changed in Jul 2016) and ended up turning up 10 minutes late so I let it go and waited for the one one that started from Blyth which was only 5 minutes late and despite this, the driver managed to get it back on time by 'scratching' of the 310 through Battle Hill Drive then when clear, gave the bus a bit of a right foot and ended up catching the really late 309 on the Coast Road arriving into Newcastle before it and on time too!