(03 Jan 2015, 7:11 pm)tyresmoke wrote 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?
I guess the only way to find out is to actually do a trial in most cases. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but it'd be refreshing to see someone attempt it. Maybe just running non-stop between Durham and Darlington, except for DurhamGate and Ferryhill Market Place southwards, and serving Newton Aycliffe heading north, but then non-stop to DurhamGate.