(05 May 2026, 10:24 am)Storx wrote Some fair points, honestly don't think there'd be much demand from CLS to those places to be fair.
It was more about giving Fencehouses, Great Lumley and Houghton (away from the X1 corridor) direct links to Newcastle more than anything and it was just a place to terminate as the interchanging doesn't really work right now and there'd probably be some demand there (let's be real no-one is changing to an hourly service).
Might help make the 71 sustainable long term and there's a lot of new house building around the Fencehouses area which deserve more than a pointless hourly midibus service to nowhere really.
You could make the case for extending the 79 through to Seaham though and terminating the 21 extension short either really though, if you didn't want it too long as the cross Houghton demand is probably quite limited really.
(05 May 2026, 1:19 pm)TheClumsyPineapple wrote "You could make the case for extending the 79 through to Seaham though and terminating the 21 extension short either really though, if you didn't want it too long as the cross Houghton demand is probably quite limited really."
The 79 makes sense in its current form as a little estate - town centre link. There isnt much point sending it to Seaham.
(05 May 2026, 3:27 pm)Storx wrote No I get that, it was more about getting the Houghton to CLS bit more useful something like:
As an 21 extension, with a few peak buses going via West Rainton towards Houghton in the AM peaks and from Houghton in the PM peaks. All the pink bits don't really have any realistic link to Newcastle and the orange bits would get something quicker without changing.
Just means the other half of the 71 would be needed on something and the 71 in Seaham is a local bus anyway really.
If it's not on the X1 corridor, it's a hard place to get to down there, knowing someone from down there and just not bothering as it's too challenging tbh.
I don't think people really understand the point of the 71. It links 2 major County Durham places. Houghton just happens to be in between. I have got this service a few times, and regularly see this service when waiting for 78. It gets a lot more passengers than most local authority-run services around tbf. GNE butchered this route by reducing the frequency and then binning it off. The passenger loads between Seaham & Houghton generally are kinda quiet but have decent loads at peak times.
No way should it be linked with the 21. The best way to improve buses to Newcastle for Great Lumley/Fencehouses etc.. is to coordinate bus times and have better ticketing. Not giving every estate an hourly version/diversion of another route.
In my opinion, the best way to make the 71 more financially viable is to either link it with the 725 to Langley Park to give better county Durham East/West connections OR make it half hourly between Chester-le-St & Houghton and hourly to Seaham, coordinate it with the 78 for departures.
Another thing would be to do something with the 79 & 520, but that is Nexus territory.