(24 Oct 2017, 10:58 pm)James101 wrote Why does every suggestion RE the X55 forget Hartlepool exists? It's perhaps not pretty but there is approx. 92'000 people there, which sizes it larger than Washington and only slightly smaller than Darlington.
My suggestion was just based on my own findings from travelling on the last journey from Newcastle to Stockton a few times, the last of which saw me boarding at Dalton Park to find that there was no other passengers on-board until we got to Hartlepool where it sometimes tends to pick up some of the traffic from the 36 etc between Hartlepool and Stockton. Also with my suggestion of Newcastle - Dalton Park only, I do wonder if a more frequent service from Newcastle would potentially attract people to visit Dalton Park connecting from other Stagecoach services on Tyneside. I don't know what the other journeys are like on the X55 but I can't imagine that the rest do much better, really for Hartlepool to be worth running to/from, enough people would have to use it to make it justifiable considering it is a bit of a distance between Dalton Park and Hartlepool (although in the same sense, Newcastle - Dalton Park is the same really). I think the discussion we should be having about the X55 IMO is placing bets on if/when Stagecoach will pull the plug.
There's another idea, Sunderland - Dalton Park Stagecoach service in some form.