(03 Jan 2015, 7:08 pm)mb134 wrote I just think it's Arriva not wanting to introduce a new service unless competition forces them. Look at the case in Nortumberland about 5-6 years ago, GNE introduced the express X41 between Ashington and Newcastle, with far lower journey times than the X31, X32 or X33 could offer. They then introduced the X30, with Scanias they already had (274, 281 and 289), and ran it 5 minutes in front. They could have easily done this previously, but chose not to as there was no competition and they had a monopoly pretty much.
I'm not sure there is a huge amount of end to end demand on the 7 though? Most people from Newton Aycliffe go into Darlington, whereas those from Ferryhill tend to head for Durham. The college loadings give a few problems (and hence we run a duplicate) but the double decks on order should sort this...
Whether there'd be enough demand to run an hourly non-stop express I'm not sure? You'd probably be reliant on people heading into town to catch the express to the other end, which means extra journey time for them and this may not be worth it once you take into account connection times etc. Whether you'd be able to grow the market from others heading to Durham - maybe?