Everything that has been mentioned makes sense in my view. One thing that strikes me about 26 terminating at Boldon ASDA is that it removes the need for the service to have double deckers (current Jarrow extension is only served between school runs so a bus can drop out). This should see 26 become fully single decker again. It's also proposed that the frequency of service between Red House, Downhill, Town End Farm, Hylton Castle, Castletown, and Enterprise Park is increased from 2 per hour to 3 per hour which has to be a huge plus.
Looking like the complete withdrawal of any useful Sunderland - Pallion links though, but that's no surprise to me. Everytime I've been on the 99, it hasn't picked up any passengers at all in Pallion heading to Sunderland. Pallion is already served by super-frequent Stagecoach 10/11 every 7/8 minutes. Current 99 is plagued with reliability problems due to its long route and tight running times so I guess it's not attractive to bus users in Pallion anymore. The only Go North East link between Sunderland and Pallion is proposed on the 36 during peak times only. But this will be in the "opposite" direction; Sunderland>Pallion in morning peak, and Pallion>Sunderland in afternoon peak. These peak-time links are focused on getting workers to the Enterprise Park at Hylton instead.
The old 35 used to take about 12 minutes between Royal Hospital and Silksworth during the daytime. Current 99 takes 7 minutes between Royal Hospital and Sunderland. To achieve the extra distance required to Silksworth, it looks like they've proposed slight changes to accomodate the extra run time. By their own admission by saying "on a similar route", it looks like the turning circles at Seaburn Morrisons, Witherwack, and Castletown will no longer be served. The time saved from these should be enough to enable the service to run to Silksworth reliably. This will mean that 2 buses (down from 4) would be needed based on an hourly frequency.
It also looks like 99 would serve Beaumont Street in both directions which would be a huge plus for me. This better serves the new housing estate there.
Because the 99 is reducing to hourly, I'm hoping this will eliminate the interworking with Scholars. I can't see the service dropping to every 2 hours during the peaks so that a bus can drop out to run a Scholars, or every 90 minutes for a single bus running between Silksworth and Witherwack only. A regular hourly daytime (6am-6pm) service linking Seaburn and Silksworth to the Enterprise Park with none of this business about dropping buses and axing sections of route on Schooldays would be brilliant.
I think it would be a bigger boost if peak-time journeys could be extended beyond Silksworth the short distance to Doxford International which could almost entirely replace the Nexus 592. I don't think there's any direct service between Silksworth and Doxford Park anymore.
I really like the idea of 36's replacing 99's between Hylton Castle / Castletown / Enterprise Park to Sunderland. The 99 route was a bit of a chew taking the long route via Pallion and Royal Hospital and I think a lot of people prefer to take the 26 for that reason. The timings I've just worked out would be 53-55 minutes in each direction. On a half hourly frequency that would be two buses in each direction running in continuous circles across Sunderland City Centre, with about a 5 minute layover at Park Lane.
On current times, the short 26's get a 9 minute layover at Boldon ASDA, and a 7 minute layover at Sunderland. Considering the route is only 37 minutes long, that's a bit excessive. If the X36 was to add say 2-3 minutes to the existing X3 running times, then maybe 26 and X36 would interwork at Sunderland to better spread the layovers around.
So if I've got this right; 26/X36 would have 7 buses whether they interwork at Sunderland or not. 36's would have 4 buses, and 99 have 2 buses. 9's would also be set to be increasing from 4 to 6. This totals 19. The existing PVR is 21, so I reckon they'd be saving on a couple of buses worth of work if these changes g0-ahead.
I really do like that Northern leaflet - hopefully all other Northern routes will have these at some point!
