(2 hours ago)Economic505 wrote A better solution, would be to transfer Hartlepool back into political County Durham. Obviously more complex and not a bus issue.
imo the better thing would be to merge Tees Valley and NECA as one big area. Both areas are so connected in many ways, it just doesn't make sense being split imo. It's very different to Yorkshire and the North East where there's a very clear split or the North East and Cumbria.
Then stuff like this doesn't become an issue.
Ideally the network needs to run like this:
which connects all the main towns and villages to the key places with the 8/8A/22/X22/23/24/56/58/59/113/X6 being the routes which form the network as imo it's a bit of a mess with too many duplicates, especially 6 BPH from Durham to Hartlepool and 8 BPH from Sunderland to Durham (including the 20/20A). Get them split off going to other big towns imo. The 6/7/X10/X12 staying as they are as they're fine.