Newcastle Clean Air Zone: services which need to be upgraded
Newcastle Clean Air Zone: services which need to be upgraded
(05 Oct 2021, 11:17 am)peter I think part of the problem with Arriva's fleet is that they have too many Solo's for their present operation. And so you end up with the situation at Jesmond where there's a mixture of everything on all services because they need to try and allocate the Solo's to the boards with the fewest passengers. We've seen Blyth essentially remove it's midi-bus fleet by nabbing Pulsars which have been made spare elsewhere due to Covid reductions, but the likes of Durham and Newcastle have too many smaller vehicles which are then having to be used on services which need higher capacity.
Hopefully when it gets to the point in a few years time where a vast wave of the fleet is due for replacement, that a smaller amount of midibuses are purchased to fulfil the needs primarily at Darlington and then the odd few services elsewhere (95 at Whitby, 46/51/55/553 at Jesmond, 57/57A at Ashington and 58 at Blyth). And then the rest of the Solo's replaced by larger vehicles so that they don't have to be allocated to frontline services such as the 52/53/54 for example and can be taken out of Durham's fleet allowing the 56/57/57A/58 and 49/49A to be operated with more appropriately sized vehicles.
(05 Oct 2021, 11:17 am)peter I think part of the problem with Arriva's fleet is that they have too many Solo's for their present operation. And so you end up with the situation at Jesmond where there's a mixture of everything on all services because they need to try and allocate the Solo's to the boards with the fewest passengers. We've seen Blyth essentially remove it's midi-bus fleet by nabbing Pulsars which have been made spare elsewhere due to Covid reductions, but the likes of Durham and Newcastle have too many smaller vehicles which are then having to be used on services which need higher capacity.
Hopefully when it gets to the point in a few years time where a vast wave of the fleet is due for replacement, that a smaller amount of midibuses are purchased to fulfil the needs primarily at Darlington and then the odd few services elsewhere (95 at Whitby, 46/51/55/553 at Jesmond, 57/57A at Ashington and 58 at Blyth). And then the rest of the Solo's replaced by larger vehicles so that they don't have to be allocated to frontline services such as the 52/53/54 for example and can be taken out of Durham's fleet allowing the 56/57/57A/58 and 49/49A to be operated with more appropriately sized vehicles.
