(25 Feb 2015, 4:24 pm)cbma06 wrote Im wondering if this Arriva person was at Peterlee bus station the whole day taking notes of loadings, if he was taking notes of loadings on the incoming and out going of service X21 and maybe the GNE X7 and I can see them pulling the X21 off which would be shame, but I still would like Arriva to run the 22 which is the main bus service as a X22 between Sunderland and Peterlee (as Dan favours the X22 service aswell) as passengers from East Durham area south don't want to go to Sunderland on an all stopper stopping at every single stop between Dalton le dale and Ryhope, l caught the 21/X21 yesterday at Half 8 in the morning to Sunderland and their was a bus load to Peterlee bus station bus as the bus turned into a X21 then their was only 8 passengers on the bus to Sunderland Interchange arriving at 9am.

Since DCC has took full control of Peterlee bus station, the painters have been in to paint the ceiling of the bus station.

That's pretty regular, for that run, and probably one of the better loadings the service has...

You have two 22s, two 23s and two X21s on top of GNE's X7 between 8am - 9am. One of the 23s that comes into Park Lane at around 0820 does alright, but the others don't come in with particularly great loadings. The Stockton peak run (the 0900 arrival) tends to do better than the normal Darlington run - that can come in empty and leave empty. For about two weeks, I got on the 0810 departure out of Sunderland more-or-less daily, and I was often the only passenger on it.

Glad the X7 hasn't been affected too much by the introduction of the X21 (but I am bias of course), as the 0830 arrival into Sunderland still tends to come in fairly full. The daytime runs are certainly doing a lot better, as well, as the most I've seen on the X21 during the day is about 3 passengers in total (out of Sunderland). In my opinion, Arriva certainly should have considered improving what they already had instead of implementing a completely direct service via the A19, which doesn't allow many pick-up points.