(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.
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.
Its a fair point about synchronization times to meet trains - that is an issue across the industry. I think it could be done with the 71 at Seaham based on present arrivals and departure, certainly to and from the Houghton side. However you are then at the mercy of Network Rail and the mandarins at DaFT as if they change the train times, even by a couple of minutes it can throw your neat bus schedule out the window!
I think there has to be an acceptance that at some point you have to stop throwing good money after bad. When you've posted a loss of £4mil and other operators have just about made a minor profit in similar operating circumstances, I imagine things are rightly reexamined