I'm intrigued too. I was actually talking to another member on here last week passing back and forth possible ideas for these services, and I was wondering about the possibility of diverting X3 through Downhill, Red House and Southwick replacing the 36, and increase the 9 to every 20 minutes through East Boldon to sort of compensate for re-routing of X3. The X3 diversion would only add two minutes in each direction but would definitely give the route a massive boost and saves on five Versas, six including the spare one! Most likely an outlandish idea, but I'm really interested to see the consultation anyway and see what's proposed