(05 Oct 2021, 11:17 am)peter wrote 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.

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.