(02 Jun 2026, 10:32 am)Adrian wrote I don't think this is too dissimilar to other services though. Buses going into Newcastle tend to be a lot busier in the morning peak than buses going out, and vice versa with the afternoon peak. You could say the same about Durham when I lived and worked there.

Ideally you want loadings either way, but if one direction is top-heavy, I could see it being useful for bringing a service back on time. The X88 certainly used to suffer with this, with it's 20 minutes between Washington and the Metrocentre.

Not sure I agree there because even known there might be less people being picked up, on the vast majority of the interurban stuff there's a major destination at the other end which start picking people up, ie. Consett, Stanley, Blyth, Ashington, Houghton Le Spring, Peterlee or whatever.

The Durham Metrocentre services don't do that they just start duplicating the X12/21/X21 and there's no need for the extra capacity. A bus from the Metrocentre direct to CLS then to Durham potentially has the literal demand of 0 new passengers. There's just absolutely no use for it and dropping the capacity on the X21/21 between the 2 places isn't the answer either.