(03 Aug 2015, 9:27 pm)tyresmoke wrote That's an interesting suggestion! Would there be enough demand for a half hourly service to Elton & Longenwton? Haughton Green already has a frequent service to Darlington, and freshly branded Frequenta so throwing more buses down there might not be a great idea? Not sure there may be demand for a few college journeys to colleges in Middlesbrough (and maybe Stockton) from the estates I suppose?!
I don't think Darlington drivers would get particularly lost, plenty of them still go via Hartburn on the odd occasion just for some different scenery. Add to that Yarm Lane gets used frequently all through the day I'm sure they'll retain the route knowledge should they go through Hartburn at any point in the future... I wonder how many Stockton drivers similarly retain route knowledge around Darlington? A while since we did X66s (long before I started!) that's for sure.
I am sure the registrations involved will be public knowledge soon but until then I'm not going to say any more. There's certainly a background theme of expansion going on though, what with the X20 and 46 seeing increased resources being utilised.
Same could be said for North Road, which has a service every 7/8 minutes (plus additionally 3A/3B and X66 in parts) although some parts of Harrowgate Hill doesn't have another service. Sometimes you got a few jump on at Darlington College when the OK1 ran to Middlesbrough and then you would have other stops on the route would have a service to Stockton and Middlesbrough. True about Longnewton, can't say that would warrant a half hourly service.
Recently most have been going in and out of Stockton the same way to reach the A66 although the driver on my X66 to Darlington on Saturday used Yarm Road, it's certainly not the first time Darlington drivers have gone down here on the X66 but I haven't seen many go down here recently. Fairly recently a Darlington entered Stockton from Middlesbrough via the 21A route and a few years back one driver did the Stagecoach 36 route from Stockton to Middlesbrough.