(21 Jan 2026, 10:26 pm)PH - BQA wrote If the resource is there, the 35 should be increased to every 15 minutes to be honest. The only time I can ever remember that route being reliable is when they were that frequent around 10 years ago.
My maths might be slightly off, but I reckon if you just loop Newbiggin (Wansbeck Hospital - A189 - Spital - Cresswell Arms - Seacrest - Woodhorn - Wansbeck Hospital) on the X21 and interwork it with the X22 at Newcastle again you can keep them every 20 without changing PVR.
57/57A is a different game - but to be honest that seems more bus related at the moment. It's a graveyard for anything that struggles with town by the looks of it - once those 10/61-plate Pulsars get turned into baked bean tins you'd hope it would be better.
Aye don't disagree with the 35, I've seen it a few times at the Morpeth side and it's always looking healthy, to be honest. Could be an opportunity to drop it down to singles aswell since there's way too many of the things and like you said they're the most unreliable vehicles anyway.
Not sure it's just vehicle related the 57/57A tbf, the timetable is tight as an understatement and it's got no recovery (has 3 minutes at Whitley). All you need is a wheelchair, or a set of traffic lights and it's shot to pieces and that's before going into the fact the 57A timetable between Ashington and Cramlington has zero extra time at peak times and is literally impossible. It badly needs to interwork with something like on a Saturday but obviously you need a service, then give it some layover time at Whitley so it can actually recover, when things do go wrong. It's pretty likely there's going to be something considering how much ground they cover.