(08 Aug 2014, 8:37 pm)mb134 wrote Thank youso if Arriva have given two spares for a route with a PVR of 18 why not give a route with a PVR of 15 2 spares also? Especially when more than half the vehicles are nearly 7 years old...
Having just two spares for a PVR of 18 is also pushing it, if you ask me. I appreciate it can be difficult to finance spare vehicles, but this is where corporate liveried spares to the same interior specification as branded vehicles comes in - which Go North East cleverly did in their orders last year for the Citylink, Fab56 and Cobalt Clipper, as aureolin pointed out above. This way, the vehicles can be allocated to other services, but their first point of call is to act as backup for the service for which they were ordered for.
I understand that having two different 'pots' of money will also make this difficult, but is perhaps something Arriva UK ought to have thought about. 'Sapphire' delivers what is allegedly a 'unique' public transport experience, with it also being marketed as upmarket and high quality. If vehicles which aren't to Sapphire specification are regularly cropping up due to the lack of spare vehicles, then a lot of customers are going to be very disappointed (although the lack of Next Stop Announcements makes this one debatable!
), and this upmarket brand is being heavily diluted in the process.