(24 Apr 2021, 10:27 pm)mb134 wrote I think I'd used Saturday timetables as they loaded up first on Bustimes - my bad. Just as a note, however, the morning peak runs into Newcastle have an extra 10 minutes or so to do Gosforth to Newcastle to allow for traffic, even pre-Covid I've never arrived into Newcastle more than a few minutes late during the morning peak due to this padding in the timetable. 

I'd looked for fare info but couldn't seem to find any. I think that'll be appealing for some, but again if folk already have to catch a bus to the station are they going to fork out for an additional ticket? 

Aware there are benefits to it, but can't get away from thinking that the location of stations in relation to the bulk of the population in each town is far from ideal. Equally, I feel like frequency and potentially fares could put people off making short hops - who is going to go from Ashington to Blyth on it, for example?

Yeah some fair points mind honestly I can't many short hop journeys but tbh there isn't really any on any railway lines. Who wants to go to Blyth regardless ?. Mind I think there might be some shuttle for Britishvolt from Bebside. Not sure if it's ever planned but having through trains to the Metro Centre and beyond could be a popular move in the future potentially (think it's standalone at first though).

Tbf on the journeys tho I can imagine it being cars that it might pick more than just bus users. I know around here (Seaton Valley) that's there's a fair few who'll drive down to Northumberland Park or one of the other Metro stations along that stretch and dump their cars and Metro into town and they'll be the sort of users who'll move as much as existing bus users.

With location admit some of them aren't ideal like but Prudhoe on the Hexham line and that can pick up over a 100k users a year and I think Haltwhistle has something like 70k for a town of 4.5k people. 

Obviously I can't comment on the X21 but the X7 is absolutely horrific in mornings used to be anything from 35 mins to 55 mins. Got to the stage where I'd bus / metro to avoid it in the end which isn't cheap but was worth it.

Not sure where I read about the fares, want to say SENRUG but could be wrong.