(30 Jun 2021, 1:15 pm)BoroLad wrote The one issue with putting coaches on the 685 is the stopping pattern. A route like the X9 or X10 has a fairly short list of potential stops, but the 685 has 117 stops along its length. There's also the issue that generally the X9 or X10 only stops once in each area it serves, whereas the 685 is just a standard stopping service for most of its route.

A coach could work for an express "X85" service (X85 in quote marks because it'd have to be called something else like the X69). But I'm not convinced there's demand for such a service - the 685 deals with a lot of overlapping flows but relatively few people are on it for longer journeys.

In fairness it used to be ran by coaches until roughly 2012 without any real issues and it's no different to some Stagecoach services in the Highlands such as the 10 from Aberdeen to Inverness or X99 from Inverness to Thurso. Even known it stops at a lot of places most of the 'shorter' journeys are easily 40+ mins some much greater and they'd want a better comfort than a Pulsar especially when there's a train which is an option in most places.