(08 Jul 2019, 10:30 am)Andreos1 wrote
Durham Road through Low Fell was designed in such a way, that from the mid 80's onwards, it was only going to suit pedestrians and local traffic.
The removal of footbridges and installation of traffic lights every few yards, was a determined way to discouraging traffic from the area.
The recent installation of speed humps, is just painful.
It does nothing to make me want to use the bus (express or not) and I can't be the only one.
In the past, you had longer distance services from say Co Durham, which operated on a limited stop basis once they got in to T&W.
Since then, it seems that a number of these routes have had an x pre-fix added and they now call anywhere any everywhere.
Going from Birtley to Newcastle back in the day, you had the limited stop services or the local services, that stopped everywhere.
The X1 (or X5 as it was known), was limited stop south of the Galleries too. It didn't offer the painful stop/start service around the coalfields, that it does now.
I do think there needs to be some balance, offering passengers an alternative, particularly when travelling a distance.
The X21 did offer some alternative over the 21, but seeing as it now serves Low Fell, the only major difference between the two, is Birtley.
The X5 wasn't as frequent, though, with the X1 appearing to be a merger of that and the 194(?) from Washington to Easington Lane.