Go North East have suffered in the Sunderland area in recent years though. The Sunderland - Pennywell 126 service was marketed as a Simply Turn Up and Go! service running up to every 7/8 minutes. In July 2006 the service was reduced to a 15 minute frequency, and then again to a 20 minute frequency due to large-scale housing demolitions in the Doxford Park and Pennywell areas. The demolitions in the Pennywell area were only located on the route of the 126. The houses lining the Stagecoach 20 route were all retained and the 20 continues to do well today every 10 minutes.

It was mentioned in a Competition Commission report that Go North East were particularly hard-hit when Redby significantly expanded their commercial operations in 2007.

I'm encouraged by the expansion of services in this area such as the new X7 starting a week on Monday. I think giving the X7 a variant of the already successful Tyne-Tees Xpress branding shows GNE's commitment to wanting to make this service work. But I can see their reluctance to put better buses on the X7 than the B10BLE's. Tying up four ex-Red Arrows Citaros away for the X3 was seemingly not enough to get people on board. Tying up six brand-new Versas for the 36 hasn't seemed to have worked either.

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What are peoples thoughts on the timetable style of the SimpliCity 42?

http://www.simplygo.com/download/publication/30302.22

While I was re-newing my bus pass today, there was a woman brandishing a copy of the 42 timetable at the clerk losing her loaf because she couldn't understand the format. I think the format is a nice idea - but it takes up a lot more room in the leaflet than the conventional timetable would. The 36 used to have this style too, but reverted to "normal-style" with the November 2012 changes, so perhaps this format is being discontinued.