(24 Feb 2023, 12:54 am)Jimmi wrote Arriva have already tried running a service round that part of Seaham, the X21 ran via Seaham and Spectrum Business Park and it never really took off, not helped by Go North East revising the X7 and introducing the X6 about a month after who provided a roughly half hourly link between Peterlee, Seaham & Sunderland vs Arriva's hourly X21, prior to that, for 2 years they had it go direct from Peterlee to Ryhope via the A19.

Perhaps as the 23 serves areas that the X21 and current X6 doesn't, maybe it would work but it would an already long journey, even longer (would also impact the interworking cycle for the 22/23/24).

Pygalls did briefly cover the suggested routing in part in the later days of the existence of their 230 service running direct from Hartlepool via Horden omitting Peterlee by changing the terminus to Seaham instead of Sunderland and also calling at Dalton Park but that didn't work out.

Well I’d argue the 23 picks up very little in New Seaham and Ryhope - perhaps largely due to duplication and saturation on the corridor -  so whilst timings, interworking and PVR will be important considerations of course, there’s scope to try something different and in many respects there’s not an awful lot to loose in terms of passenger numbers.

As you say, the X21 was a bit of a different beast competing with the then X7, which was a fast express only really serving Peterlee whereas the 23 serves the villages and has scope to pick up people in those communities. 

Very briefly the Pygalls operation to Seaham wasn’t it? I almost completely forgot about that! That whole service struggled with people not knowing the operator or the service and little information in the wider public domain.  

I personally feel in many areas commercials operators have become a little complacent. Whereas perhaps looking at doing things a bit different might reap some benefits? Taking Seaham, it has grown quite a lot in recent years, say the last 10-15 years with regeneration of the town centre/sea front and new developments, but bus services have declined. Appreciating private car ownership linked to some of the newer housing developments and wider regeneration but shouldn’t a decent bus service be convincing people to ditch the car? Living in Seaham, unless you’re going to Sunderland City Centre, via bus there’s few routes and even where you can get during the day, most of these routes are gone by 7pm/8pm!