(15 Aug 2018, 10:26 pm)S830OFT wrote It's well worth a try at New Ideas, people said the X10 into Dalton Park would be a bad move, it turns out it's boosted passenger numbers...
And I think you will find most delays are caused by passengers at the bus stations mainly purchasing various tickets. I've been on the X15 quite a few times and even when it departs Newcastle late it makes up the time on route.
However the X10 was building on an already solid route. Your proposal would be in competition with an established service, and ran by a company with a bad reputation.
The X15 generally does make up time out of Newcastle, as the time allocated for it to cover the A1 stretch to Morpeth is usually more than required. There is time allowed at each bus station for passengers to buy tickets, as is the same with any bus route. The X15 has 7 minutes at Haymarket, 5 at Morpeth and 6 at Alnwick (10 if it doesn't extend to Berwick). A big issue with the X15 is that the A1 has no overtaking lane from Morpeth until just after the Felton turn off, where it duals until after Alnwick. Traffic on this section of road is horrific at the best of times, often slowed to 5-10 mph for no reason. You also then need to contend with the traffic in Morpeth, Alnwick and Gosforth.
Arriva could, of course, whack a load of extra running time into each journey to combat this traffic. However, what happens when the traffic is less than expected, or is only bad in one place? They'd have a load of early running buses doing dangerously low speeds on the A1, carrying fresh air because the advertised journey time was excessive.