(08 Mar 2016, 11:46 pm)BusLoverMum wrote Having to change bus can turn a 30 minute journey into a hour. That's 5 hours a week lost for someone working full time with the possibility of more expensive travel.
(08 Mar 2016, 11:55 pm)Jimmi wrote Have to agree here, the amount of time that can be added onto journeys with having to connect between two or more buses can be significant even on services with fairly high frequencies, even on my journeys home from New College Durham at Framwellgate Moor - Newton Aycliffe when the 7 started terminating at Durham Bus Station instead of Framwellgate Moor (except a few peak runs) My journey times saw an increase from 55 minutes to around 1 hour, 30 minutes, some nights it was closer to two hours! This was all down to bad connection times between buses and the 64 being a pile of garbage as it was always late or never turned up!
Exactly!
If the X8 were to omit Cramlington (as has been suggested here), there would be ridiculous connection times. It's not as simple as saying "oh the 57/57A exists, you can just connect there" considering that service runs hourly in the evenings and is even being reduced further due to the Northumberland council cuts.
By not having the X8 serve at least Cramlington Whitelea through to Annitsford, you'd have no services at all for a substantial residential area past about 8pm (whereas the X8 currently serves here until 11:10pm). So Quorum workers can't walk five minutes to the stop outside but existing X8 users just need to suck up the potential half-hour work every night?