Improved bus services coming to County Durham, South Tyneside and Gateshead – including a new connection to Dalton Park

Go North East is introducing major improvements to their X1 service this week. These changes include new links to Dalton Park, more frequent services to Newcastle and brand-new double-decker buses on the route.

The X1A service will provide new links to Dalton Park, the biggest outlet shopping centre in the region, and Murton for people in Houghton-le-Spring, Newbottle, Penshaw, Washington, Springwell and Old Durham Road. The X1A service will run once per hour, Monday to Saturday.

Passengers travelling between Newcastle and Hetton-le-Hole will benefit from more frequent buses. The frequency of the X1 between these two destinations will be increased from 15 minutes to 12 minutes Monday-Saturday, providing 25% more capacity to the service. During peak times for commuters (weekdays between 5pm and 6pm), buses will depart Eldon Square every 10 minutes.

Ben Gilligan, Managing Director at Go North East: “We’re really exciting to be introducing significant improvements to our X1 services and for our passengers to enjoy smoother, more comfortable journeys on new buses, which only joined our fleet in January. These service changes will benefit so many people in our communities, including commuters and those enjoying a weekend evening out in Newcastle.”

Go North East has also introduced later departures from Newcastle to Easington Lane on Friday and Saturday nights so their customers enjoying a weekend evening out can still get home using public transport. The last trip from Newcastle will now depart at 00:03.

The operator is advising X1 passengers to carefully check the new timetable on their app or website before travelling as the service improvements have led to significant changes to departure times from all stops and also the renumbering of parts of the service. The new leg to Dalton Park will be numbered the X1A, with the existing X1A becoming the X1B. This X1B will now start from the Vigo Lane/ Picktree Lane junction.