(06 Aug 2021, 4:24 pm)Andreos1 wrote If there was a clock-face timetable between Chester and Woodstone village, then I could see the 71 and 78 working in harmony between those points.The Houghton to Seaham part of the 71 has been subsidised for most of the last 35 years - for many years it was the 148, operated from memory by JC Bell and then by Redby before Go North East.
As it is, they not only duplicate each other, but can follow each other too. Not much headway at all.
That tweaking of the timetable, coupled with a synchronisation with trains at Seaham and promotion of the route, may have seen it succeed.
This must be the third or fourth reincarnation of the route that never has worked and it was never going to suddenly start working this time.
Their repeated insistence on doing the same thing over and over... well it reeks of that laziness I mentioned the other day.
Of course, before 1986 it was also subsidised, but as part of the overall financial support that Durham County Council paid the bus operators under a network wide grant.