(31 May 2015, 5:44 pm)aureolin wrote Why does the depot's preference come into it? If someone at Arriva has signed off painting and branding an extra vehicle for the X12, then surely that should be used in the first instance? It's a ridiculous situation having an 'X12' branded vehicle going round Durham on everything but the X12, and it confuses customers.
Agree.
I can come up with two plausible reasons:
- Capacity issues on the Durham - Middlesbrough stretch of the route on Belmont's boards at peak times making it illogical to allocate a single deck vehicle. However, if this was the case, why wasn't a double-deck vehicle selected to be converted to MAX specification opposed to a single-deck?
- The bus is being kept local, at the request of the depot's engineering department (owing to a previous fault), as they want to make sure it's settled in before sending it out on a demanding service like the X12. This becomes less and less likely the more time it spends on these services, though. This has been ongoing since January...