(28 Jul 2014, 9:22 pm)DaveyBowyer wrote Do you think that 6116 / 6117 will be kept red until spares are found or will they repaint them after coming back from Glasgow? And with regards to the 310, unless the 309 was laying over in Haymarket for 14 minutes, then the 310 must still be the same as now? The only thing for spares that I can see happening is Deptford losing 1 Gemini to Percy Main with both usingLet's face it, nobody knows the answer to any of the questions that have been asked today with regards to the Cobalt Clipper - and quite frankly that's down to the fact we haven't got a timetable for the 310. Once we do have the timetable for the 310, we may be able to piece together information with greater ease.
older deckers as a last resort. I think that both services should be alright with 1 spare until something more
permanant crops up but towards Christmas or if the roadworks at Nissan continue to cause problems, then I think that Percy Main would have to fall back on the Lolynes.
I really do think we've discussed the Cobalt Clipper at length today and the discussion up to now has been nothing but speculation and assumptions.
First and forthmost, the repainting of 6116/17 five months after entering service is highly unlikely. I'd say it's almost unheard of for new buses to be repainted before they've seen five years of service. That said, if the PVR was to increase to 17 as has been suggested (which, as far as I'm concerned, is unlikely), these buses would have to be repainted. This would leave the Cobalt Clipper with no spare Volvo B9TL vehicles, and all of those catchy marketing lines you came up with before would be irrelevant, because we'd regularly see vehicles which don't have free Wi-Fi and power socket facilities being allocated.
On that note, it is highly unlikely that any new buses, regardless of colour, will transfer to a different depot. 6084-6100 were purchased for the Fab56, and GNE's bid to Go-Ahead would have included details for the payback time based on revenue being generated by the Fab56. The cost for 6100 was worked out for it being allocated to Deptford, and not to Percy Main - so the chances of any of these vehicles moving are incredibly slim. Despite this, why should the Fab56 suffer because of a change made to the Cobalt Clipper?
I've made my views clear on what I think will happen, but I have been wrong in the past and I will admit it should I be wrong about this, too. The same PVR (based on rough estimations) can be achieved with a 15 minute frequency on the 309 and a 30 minute frequency on the 310 - and you'd simply be plugging your readily available resources into the area which needs them most (partly down to competition, although existing passenger numbers would have reflected the decisions made too).