(Yesterday, 3:19 pm)Storx wrote Must admit I never really understand why the X24, serves Sunderland. There's tonnes of the South of the city which has no bus services towards Newcastle, they should keep it away like the X34 stays away from South Shields; there's more than enough services along Chester Road for Sunderland itself.
Something like:
Just throwing a random route from nowhere, there's arguably a few local links on it aswell, especially to the hospital which is also as awkward to get to since stuff like the 35 were pulled from the areas.
I think it is probably because once you're as far as the Hospital area, you pretty much may as well make the run into the City Centre as it will generate fares (hospital, uni etc) and fits into the 3 bus rota (and operationally convenient re layovers, changeovers). I'd guess from your example map that doing something more ambitious along those lines would mean adding in an extra resource which might then not stack up commercially. Definitely agree though that there are chunks of Sunderland South that are lacking useful cross links since the likes of 6, 18, 19 were all pulled over the years in favour of the managed decline of the 'change in the city centre' mindset.