Newcastle Clean Air Zone: services which need to be upgraded

peter

993

06 Oct 2021, 1:06 am #133

(05 Oct 2021, 1:12 pm)Storx Yeah your right tbh. Mind for the 57/57A (Ashington) you'd probably be better off running them with some form of midi bus even known they're not really needed capacity wise. It would be easier to have one type of bus for the 35 / 57 / 57A / X14 rather than having different fleets running different routes. The 1 / 2 / 58 at Blyth could be same as no doubt over time they won't need 10.8m Pulsar's either unless you can somehow get Jesmond running the 58.

The Durham services and the 52/53/54/55 could all be ran by them aswell something like a 9.7m/10.4m vehicle with 29/33 forward seats would be more than enough. Least it brings a bit of fleet continuity so things can be swapped around easier rather that what we have at Ashington currently with the Solo's running on the X21 etc while 7510 has worked itself on the 57 boards again and everything being allover the place at both Jesmond and Durham.

Yeah I agree, Arriva's system of regulation and lack of fixed allocation makes them the ideal candidates for fleet standardisation and yet they don't seem to really employ it. I do hope they might take the opportunity during the next fleet renewal.

-Ashington and Blyth are fairly simple really, I think replacing the remaining single-decks with double-decks on the 'former' MAX services would help, with just the 1/2, 57/57A, and 58 as non-double deck. No route specific branding (except Sapphire X21/X22) and all the same vehicles would make regulation and allocation a much more effective process.
-Jesmond is slightly more complex but I think more standardised single and double deck fleets e.g. Streetlites and E400's for generic allocation across the 43/44/45, 52/53/54, 306 and 685 would help, with Solo's used on everything else.
-Darlington do okay with Solo's on the town services and then larger vehicles on the long distance services - obviously the Omnicities are crying out to be replaced.
-Redcar I think could do with some more Streetlites so they can make the full allocation on the X3/X3A/X4 and remove their now dwindling fleet of Pulsars - definitely think a swap with those currently at Belmont would make sense, and then Temsa's cover everything else.
-Stockton does best with a fleet almost entirely made up of Pulsars - I reckon the Centros could be used elsewhere - Ashington or Blyth maybe.
-Durham I think is in the worst position with a very mismatched fleet. A standardised set of single and double decks for use on the 6/7/22/23/24/43/X46/48/64/X12 and then a minibus fleet for the 49/49A/56/57/57A/61/62 would be ideal but I don't know how achievable.