(06 Sep 2014, 10:59 am)Michael wrote If its gonna be like a stop gap order like the city... what do u think the city link will get in a couple of years?

Originally, I think they were wanting Volvo B9TLs for the Citylink, to assist with higher loadings at peak times. Obviously, they're no longer available, but I'd imagine that they'd still want to go for double decked vehicles.

Go North East are usually very good at allocating double decked vehicles to services which perhaps don't actually justify them during the day time, but during peaks, do. It's something which we've discussed elsewhere on the board, which other operators aren't quite as good at.

As you can imagine, heavy-weight double deckers are more expensive than light-weight single deckers, and have higher running costs too.

Allocating light-weight single deckers to the "Citylink" for x amount of years means that they've delivered higher profits compared to previous years with the allocation of the artics, and this helps when Go North East are submitting capital expenditure to Go-Ahead, because higher profits mean that heavy-weight vehicles can be justified easier. Double deckers, which would presumably be fitted with Wi-Fi and power sockets, would hopefully see passenger growth, and this is how they would workaround the higher running costs to deliver the same, if not higher, profit levels. Of course, this is a few years away yet, so anything could happen...