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peter

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07 Aug 2021, 6:35 pm #41

(07 Aug 2021, 4:54 pm)L469 YVK I agree with Martijn. GNE could easily sit around and not invest in marketing, vehicles and branding. They could also not cut routes to "keep the small minority of punters" happy. But at what cost? Would that be sustainable in the long term?

To put it in a context (and I do have some sympathy to an extent), the only decent deckers Arriva Northumbria have are the 17 plate Sapphires at Ashington and probably the 14 plate Sapphires if they haven't been shot regularly standing in on the Alnwick / Berwick 'X' routes. The youngest decker at Blyth depot (where some of their alleged 'goldmine' routes run from) is soon to be 10 year old!

Arriva might be making a profit but at somepoint, the old vehicles that "do just fine" and "at least turn up" will need replacing. Where will Arriva / DB get the capital from and how can they sustainably replace them?

If anything, Arriva could take a leaf out of GNE's book and actually run a sustainable operation that's customer friendly too and even deliver some benefits. Prime example being a restructure of the X7/X8/X9/X10/X11. If Arriva somehow replaced the southern part of the X8 and introduced a new 'X' for the Northern part eventually combining with the X10/X11 between Cramlington and Newcastle, that would be an instant win with faster journeys.

Arriva's business model is seemingly to buy a vast number of buses over a couple years, run them for their life span and then replace them, whereas the GNE model is one of a continually modernising fleet with x buses in the door replacing x buses out the door each year. If you think back ANE had Prestiges, Darts, Olympian's etc running around at the end of their service life and then from 2008 through 2012 they underwent a massive fleet replacement with Solo', Pulsars, Temsa's and Gemini's (supplemented by a couple Streetlite and E400 orders in 2014/15).

Undoubtedly GNE's method is the best for passengers meaning fewer people are having to use old buses, while ANE's might work out best from a business point of view, with a number of years on the trot making a profit by not having to invest in any new vehicles. It will be very interesting to see what happens later this decade when Arriva's fleet comes up for renewal once again!

As for the service changes, you do have to hand it to GNE for trying out different things, but at the same time a lot can be said for stability. While a brand new route with a sparkly new bus is all well and good, it's maybe less appetising if 12 months down the line it's going to change route and end up being shafted with older vehicles.