(06 Feb 2017, 6:32 am)Dan wrote I by comparison noted loadings (to the best of my ability - the tinted windows on the Omnilinks make it difficult!) on Friday morning at Gateshead Interchange whilst I was working on other buses, and found there to be no more than five passengers on each bus.

Granted, it seems to be doing as well as the X36 already, but you could get on the X24 and buy a weekly ticket on special offer for roughly the same price as a single on the X36, last week... So passenger numbers doesn't exactly equal profit!

There's obviously a whole host of other things which come into play too - the Omnilinks are heavy on fuel, and also seem to be providing a heavy weight on the engineering budget at Sunderland at the moment!

It'll be interesting to see how it works out for Stagecoach. I'm still a little sceptical about there being a market for that service, but Stagecoach are (usually) good at giving services time to grow, even if it isn't a very good picture being painted at the moment.

Think it depends on the time of the day too, it's now the 2nd week so hopefully more people know about it now.

Doing better than the X36 already?, that's not good although the routes in Sunderland City Centre, Gateshead and Newcastle give competition. 

Gateshead is mostly GNE too so i don't think Stagecoach will get many passengers from that area tbh.

I'm not keen on the tainted windows too.