On a slightly different note -
A lot of "Red Arrows" Geminis joined "Northern" B7s of the President and Vyking variety on the R1 service today. So much so, it is reported that a plum Solar has been on X1s today!

The revised 20 minute frequency seemed to work well on "Crusader" service 27 today, but I must say that the X27 was appalling. In attendance were 4x "Loop" branded vehicles and 3x "Highwayman" branded vehicles - there could have been more, but I didn't see any.
After an hour of waiting (1310 to 1410), I did not see a single X27 depart... Drivers had to wait for passengers to actually get on the bus before they could depart. Now, with incorrectly branded vehicles (it was expected) when blinds are not being displayed as the electrics were off for all vehicles, how can passengers be expected to use these buses?

What was rather irritating was that these services are all VOSA registered, yes? Are bus operators therefore allowed to axe services on the spot because no passengers wanted to board the vehicle at South Shields?
Surely the running costs would still go ahead as planned too? Driver wages, fuel consumption whilst en-route, bus station use costs... The X27 was timetabled to depart 'every few minutes'; there were at least 7 vehicles in attendance for this service, so would anyone like to calculate an approximate running cost for the service (even if it wasn't ever to depart South Shields) between 13:00 and 17:00, given that it stops at South Shields Town Centre, Jarrow Bus Station, Heworth Interchange, Gateshead Interchange and Haymarket Bus Station? It is worse that these X27s were scheduled to arrive at Haymarket, rather than Market Street West - there's an additional 50p (average) per scheduled use of the bus station... Hmm...