(05 Aug 2024, 9:01 am)tvd wrote They've had their moneys worth out of the Solos. Surely their time is running out though. The best solution is just to buy some new ones.
Solos are still being manufactured, they'll be a lot cheaper than full sized buses, and Arriva would only need a small number of them.
I know this might be a bizarre opinion but personally if I was Arriva, I'd be looking at binning off the 95/96 contracts then getting 9 Enviro 200 MMC's as:
1 Darlington - Replace 2841
8 Ashington - 57/57A/434
I'm not sure those routes are really worth it alone to have a microfleet of Solo's which they haven't purchased for years, unless they can nab some of the WF Streetlite's from down South to run it. There is currently 3 without a home at Hemel Hempstead, for example.