(3 hours ago)TheClumsyPineapple wrote There really is no demand at all for the X70. Its literally dead excluding the morning and evening peak.
I politely disagree with single deckers as the entire corridor is busy on X45/47 deckers are needed for the route. As even from consett there are healthy loads. Single deckers make no sense for it as they're always rammed whenever singles are put on.
On a 15 minute frequency - I agree. But really, that corridor needs to go back up to every 10 minutes and a few single deckers thrown in wouldn't hurt on the quieter runs.
I think GNE went overkill going fully double deck back in 2019 and it made things difficult from a cost perspective especially during covid. I think 4x boards out of the 45/46/47 wasn't quite enough, but not every board needs a decker.
Only issue with mixed allocation is if something happens to the previous journey (i.e a breakdown).