(26 Sep 2013, 9:59 pm)tyresmoke wrote Shame to see GNE cost cutting on the X7 already (and adding extra stops into it) in a desperate attempt to make it profitable. Not exactly surprising, though!
We already know that Go North East judge whether a service is commercially viable or not by looking at the number of fare-paying passengers on each and every run - not how much profit the service makes over a given period of time, looking at all passengers.
Quite frankly, if those runs are making a loss, we should have expected them to be withdrawn from Day 1. The X7 in general quite clearly is profitable however, because the service has survived its six month trial. I feel, providing the service does get upgraded to Solars once some are freed up in January, we should see another timetable change so that the timings between the X7 and X9 are further apart. At present, it's quite easy for passengers to jump off the X7 to get on the X9 (while having a 10-15 min wait in Peterlee) and still get there 5-10 minutes before the X7 would have done.
The service is successful, it just needs to prove that it can be reliable for GNE to gain passenger loyalty. The withdrawn runs we've seen in this timetable change could well be restored in the next timetable change IF the service does get upgraded.