Now that GNE's X3 has gone 'down the river', I think GNE's 71 will become the main topic in GNE's side of things.

As I use the 71 regularly, I must say, although I may have said differently in the past, I don't think there is actually anything wrong with the service itself. It just needs a better timetable in order to function properly, and I don't think the answer is to combine services, and resultantly withdrawing some. All of the places served bring passengers, and that is the main thing, it just isn't good enough in terms of reliability and
timing.

Maybe a typical run to Houghton and back could be;

Chester Front Street --- 15
Houghton Le Spring --- 50
(the extra 5 minutes allows any time lost to be made up for, and not destroy the rest of the day for the service)
Houghton Le Spring --- 55
Chester Le Street --- 30
(fair enough this leaves 15 minutes, but the service can lose, in some cases, about 10 minutes when picking up people going into Chester)

I'm crap at making timetables, so I'll let someone else try