(06 Jun 2016, 5:17 pm)Adrian wrote @biglugs - Whilst the enthusiasm is good to see, I'm not sure why you'd take well performing high frequency services, and turn them into very busy low frequency services, that won't be able to keep time in a million years. I'm all for passengers having choice in routes, but if there's a sufficient gap in the market, there should be a business case to make more resource available. Rather than getting into a situation where you're robbing Peter to pay Paul.I don't think they ever have. Too many have been and gone over the years (like the X20 - and X3 before; X95/96, the coalfields - Newcastle via Sunderland expresses and the more recent X3 up Newcastle Road).
[b]@Andreos, Jimmi, STL - I really don't think that an express to Sunderland would be well used in this day and age. Sunderland as a city centre, is certainly not what it once used to be. Go North East and Stagecoach both appear to have made PVR reductions on their Sunderland routes, and I fear that's matching the general direction of the city centre footfall.[/b]
With regard to the X20, I don't think there was enough variation compared to the 20. It wasn't that much quicker and didn't deviate too much from the existing route.
When you look at the 21 and X21, the difference is/was noticable and whilst the 20 can suffer with reliability, I am not sure it was ever to the extent the 21 can suffer.