(06 Feb 2019, 1:36 pm)Andreos1 wrote Was this a bid in relation to the Gateshead and Newcastle clean air schemes? 

Makes sense a cross-river, urban service (rather than anything going beyond those boroughs) if so.

In Martijn Gilbert's tweet welcoming the news, he did make the point of including both Newcastle and Gateshead within it
https://twitter.com/MartijnGNE/status/10...93856?s=20

53/54 initially jumped out at me, but like a few other suggestions put forward, this only has a PVR of 8 and the proposition of an electric bus sitting around in the depot all day because the 'main' 8 are operational doesn't sound too good. Having said that, I'm sure they would find a route to allocate the spare bus to when not required to cover on the main routes.