About service 23 Sunderland-Hartlepool:

Ive seen plenty of times at Peterlee bus station seeing the Arriva 23 pulling in and only a few people getting on it and then GNE X35 pulls in and a bus load of passengers boarding the X35, the 23 and X35 pulls into Peterlee bus station each way practically a few minutes apart, even though most passengers boarding the X35 have GNE ticket passes which are cheaper than Arriva tickets and the GNE passes can be used on other GNE buses in the areas and Arriva day tickets etc... can only be used on a select of services as Arriva does not have a large presence in East Durham no more (by local day tickets). Also waiting for the bus and you see a solo 23 and you let it passed just in case its packed and also the solos look abit compact but the X35 scanias are a lot better and when you board the bus you have more freedom. Only reason why the arriva 23 gets full sometimes between Sunderland and Peterlee is due to Arriva service 24 being over 30 minutes late on a 30 minute frequency, lately the Arriva service 22 from Hartlepool still has reliability issues still with the service being roughly 10 minutes later coming from Hartlepool to Peterlee.

Im more surprised that GNE hasn't took on this service between Hartlepool-Peterlee-Sunderland, also surprised that Stagecoach are still in content with their beehive of services in Sunderland and hasn't ran a service between Sunderland and Hartlepool as it would link up their services and give more better value for money if a Stagecoach pass holder wanting to travel between Sunderland areas to Stockton areas.