(09 Mar 2021, 6:12 pm)Storx wrote You know you make an interesting point there but a different option would be keep my quick X15 as the 'fast' bus upto North Northumberland. Then change the southern section and flip the X18 and X20 around, with the X20 being extended to Berwick.
The X20 arguable is the better Coast bus anyway as it serves more of Amble, and it serves the Caravan parks like you mentioned, the X18 doesn't really serve anything unless your trying to get prisoners on days trips up the Coast. Your opening loads of new links, Ashington / Lynemouth to all of North Northumberland for example but also a bus from Ashington to Berwick even known it's a bit slow whereas the X18 lost links would be mostly be covered by the X15 anyway excluding Ulgham and Pegswood.
Then any new buses would be for the premium X15 (if they ever come), with the current Enviro's doing the less harsh X18 / X20.
The flip is interesting. Thinking about it the only real place to be disadvantaged would be Acklington and Pegswood, but I don't think that people either of those would be making many journeys north of Alnwick?
I think any new buses all need to be the same spec and branding so they can all be used flexibly. The problem at the moment is that too much work is being done by the newer vehicles since the older stuff is all shot, you really need to even that out and the best way to do that is to buy a batch to cover all the Alnwick routes to even out the workload.