(14 Nov 2021, 6:00 am)Dan wrote Whilst I agree with all these comments about co-ordination, there are reasons behind it.

For the 55, the timetable is driven by shift patterns at Doxford International. In a new world post-Covid where patronage here is far less with remote work continuing, it is perhaps time to move away from that and look at where co-ordination would be beneficial to more customers. For me personally, it would be more advantageous to customers to offer a 7-8 minute frequency headway from East Herrington into Sunderland (with the 20 and X20), but you could also look at something like the X1, 55 and 62.

The 62 elsewhere on its route is a difficult one to fix, due to the interworking cycle. There have been comments about poor co-ordination between the 62 and X6 but when the two services interwork, you’re very limited in what you can do without adding an extra bus to the cycle.

It’s absolutely not about trying to kill off any service but there’s more to consider than one specific corridor.

The other favourite on here is the poor co-ordination of the 71 and 78 between Chester-le-Street and Great Lumley - but when the timetable for the 78 is co-ordinated with the 8, and the 8 is co-ordinated with the 35 from Castletown to Sunderland, and the 35 is co-ordinated with something else on another section of its route, it all gets quite tricky to achieve. Ironically a lot of the network is driven by bus station departure times, such as Durham where there aren’t enough stands to meet the service provision.


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Which means naff all in the grand scheme of things, when the 71 is stand-alone and could easily have its timetable tweaked to improve its headway with the 78.

The 35 fits around the 8, which fits around the 78 (no major timetable changes with the latter for many a year if I remember correctly - always a quarter to and quarter past from Park Lane with the 638 being bottom of the hour and 777 top of the hour). 
Absolutely nothing to do with the 71 running. That's just poor planning. Or not?