(17 Feb 2024, 3:55 pm)Mike_98 wrote I don't know if its my luck or Arrivas buses in general. The USB charging never works for me. I tried it on the B9's, Streetlites and the E400 when it was at loan at redcar the other day and none of them worked. When I was on Stagecoaches E200 MMC's, they worked great. So I assume it's just an Arriva thing.

I don't think I've found a bus anywhere in the North East where they work. They seem to be a design plan and not a functional thing. Arriva ones never seem to work, even the new Yutongs on the Q3 I've tried twice and had no luck with.

(17 Feb 2024, 5:17 pm)Shrek wrote I don't think I've found a bus anywhere in the North East where they work. They seem to be a design plan and not a functional thing. Arriva ones never seem to work, even the new Yutongs on the Q3 I've tried twice and had no luck with.

Stagecoach Stocktons Enviro's 200 MMC's ones work. Well, all the ones I've been on they have. But I find it funny how Arriva have on their newer buses (Streetlites and other ex Sapphire buses) they advertise Free Wifi and USB Charging and even their Wifi is either really slow or not working either. I know on some of their buses they have the sockets blocked off because they're either broken or dangerous to the public. Shouldn't expect anything great from Arriva.

(17 Feb 2024, 5:17 pm)Shrek wrote I don't think I've found a bus anywhere in the North East where they work. They seem to be a design plan and not a functional thing. Arriva ones never seem to work, even the new Yutongs on the Q3 I've tried twice and had no luck with.

When GoNorthEast at Riverside and Arriva at Redcar can't get a bus on the road with constant breakdowns or tech faults, I'm not surprised neither have working plugs. Most passengers would appreciate a working bus more than anything.

Both horrific depots and an embarrassment to their respective companies.

(31 Jan 2024, 7:41 pm)Mike_98 wrote I think I asked this before but unsure if anyone answered but does anyone know what’s wrong with 1422 and 1436? They been off the road for a while. I know Darlington also have a Lite which has been out for over half a year too but can’t remember the fleet number of it.

 bleve 1436 is awaiting new part

(17 Feb 2024, 7:04 pm)megansmith wrote  bleve 1436 is awaiting new part

Yep, waiting on a replacement engine. Probs still gonna be out for a decent while longer. Shame to be honest as it's last engine was insane sounding.

(17 Feb 2024, 6:25 pm)Mike_98 wrote Stagecoach Stocktons Enviro's 200 MMC's ones work. Well, all the ones I've been on they have. But I find it funny how Arriva have on their newer buses (Streetlites and other ex Sapphire buses) they advertise Free Wifi and USB Charging and even their Wifi is either really slow or not working either. I know on some of their buses they have the sockets blocked off because they're either broken or dangerous to the public. Shouldn't expect anything great from Arriva.

The buses with 3pin plug sockets (includes USB) rarely seem to work with most Bus operators, I've found USBs on multiple to work at least to some degree but level of charge seems to vary, some work a treat, others barely charge, if at all.

Uncertain on this with Arriva, however when I've been on some Darlington buses lately that had WiFi and still advertise such feature, it doesn't seem to be showing up in avaliable WiFi networks when I've tried to connect recently, so I question as to if they've removed them.

(11 Sep 2023, 9:04 pm)Storx wrote Does it even need new buses, not sure if there's any difference between them but I wouldn't be more surprised if they bought new buses for Ashington instead and sent the 17 plates to Whitby. Bar the B9's the X93/X94 rarely gets investment, second hand Omnicities, second hand Enviro 400's etc.

Yes why should northrumbria  have all the new ones  !!! Plus northrumbra don't need new ones just yet

(17 Feb 2024, 9:15 pm)Jimmi wrote The buses with 3pin plug sockets (includes USB) rarely seem to work with most Bus operators, I've found USBs on multiple to work at least to some degree but level of charge seems to vary, some work a treat, others barely charge, if at all.

Uncertain on this with Arriva, however when I've been on some Darlington buses lately that had WiFi and still advertise such feature,  it doesn't seem to be showing up in avaliable WiFi networks when I've tried to connect recently, so I question as to if they've removed them.

Sockets on the Streetdecks and B5s seem to be pretty good these days, it's a shame they only have them at the tables now though.

Can anyone update me on this cascade plan which will/maybe coming into effect when they get these other Enviro 300's on the road and what will get transferred and scrapped in the coming months if it comes into action.

(18 Feb 2024, 9:13 pm)Mike_98 wrote Can anyone update me on this cascade plan which will/maybe coming into effect when they get these other Enviro 300's on the road and what will get transferred and scrapped in the coming months if it comes into action.

1355 is off to scrap and yesterday 1351 something about a test ran out yesterday so who knows what the next few days holds for that

(19 Feb 2024, 8:04 am)Mark66t wrote 1355 is off to scrap and yesterday 1351 something about a test ran out yesterday so who knows what the next few days holds for that

That doesn't surprise me with 1355 and 1351 has been having some problems recently. Not gonna lie, I knew they weren't gonna last long. God knows what will happen to the ones if they start up at Darlo as they are still sat in Durham Depot waiting on MOT's I believe. Just a waste of time bringing them. Should have got some CX58 Pulsar 1's instead (if there is any cascaded or spare from down south).

(19 Feb 2024, 11:10 am)Mike_98 wrote That doesn't surprise me with 1355 and 1351 has been having some problems recently. Not gonna lie, I knew they weren't gonna last long. God knows what will happen to the ones if they start up at Darlo as they are still sat in Durham Depot waiting on MOT's I believe. Just a waste of time bringing them. Should have got some CX58 Pulsar 1's instead (if there is any cascaded or spare from down south).

They should send stuff from Yorkshire imo and let them deal with the mess that their engineering has caused, since they were ones looking after Redcar until recently.

SW1 - SW10 in London (16 Plate Streetdecks) if converted to single door would be the best answer, since they've done nothing since last September and are a microfleet which they hate down there. Yorkshire and Merseyside are the only 2 areas with Diesel Streetdeck's currently.

(19 Feb 2024, 11:15 am)Storx wrote They should send stuff from Yorkshire imo and let them deal with the mess that their engineering has caused, since they were ones looking after Redcar until recently.

SW1 - SW10 in London (16 Plate Streetdecks) if converted to single door would be the best answer, since they've done nothing since last September and are a microfleet which they hate down there. Yorkshire and Merseyside are the only 2 areas with Diesel Streetdeck's currently.

Yeh, doesn't make sense how they have deckers just collecting dust down there. Not gonna lie though, I would love to see a Arriva North East Streetdeck. Even though as bad as that sounds it would be interesting to see and take a ride on.

I never have actually been on one but heard they're terrible and lots of people hate them. What is their main problem which cause them to have bad rep do ya know?

(19 Feb 2024, 11:10 am)Mike_98 wrote That doesn't surprise me with 1355 and 1351 has been having some problems recently. Not gonna lie, I knew they weren't gonna last long. God knows what will happen to the ones if they start up at Darlo as they are still sat in Durham Depot waiting on MOT's I believe. Just a waste of time bringing them. Should have got some CX58 Pulsar 1's instead (if there is any cascaded or spare from down south).

Think we will see older Pulsars from NW sooner rather than later! Yorkshire & Midlands have just been raided for Merseyside and I’d suspect Shires & NE will be next in their sights with all the 09 plate ones to get rid of!
Believe they have a 15 year age limit in their partnership deal with Merseytravel down there, certainly the tendered work there does.


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(19 Feb 2024, 5:59 pm)tyresmoke wrote Think we will see older Pulsars from NW sooner rather than later! Yorkshire & Midlands have just been raided for Merseyside and I’d suspect Shires & NE will be next in their sights with all the 09 plate ones to get rid of!
Believe they have a 15 year age limit in their partnership deal with Merseytravel down there, certainly the tendered work there does.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeh, Merseyside stole the 62 plated pulsars from yorkshire and gave them older pulsars because of the age limit thing. They'll go after Durhams and Darlingtons next no doubt. Well it wouldn't surprise me anyways.

Tell ya what I didn't know that Arriva in the UK only have 3 Centros in the UK left. Just think not long ago they were quite common vehicles. They got the ANE 1534 YJ58 FFO, Arriva Beds & Bucks 3812 YJ58 FFA (Which is plain white) and Arriva Herts & Essex 3813 YJ58 FFC.

Ashington's 7574 has been involved in a head-on collision with a car while on the X21.

Hopefully everyone involved is okay, the pictures show a hefty amount of damage to the bus.

Seems like the problems down South are now starting to creep in up here.

Not sure whether it's driver related but it appears there's been a few cancellations at Blyth and Ashington today and a complete lack of buses left due to breakdowns and accidents.

Definitely appears to be a board on the X22 missing all today which ended up on the X20 to cover the 58 Plate that appeared to die on X15 (god knows what that was doing on there).

Not to mention the random Streetlite that ended up at Blyth today with the short Solo replacing it's board on the 1.

It's almost like you can't keep taking contracts on and not send buses to actually do the work or the buses they do send are near 12+ years old.

This is a reply I got from Arriva earlier in the week and I questioned about the cancellations.

"Regrettably, the operational difficulties that we are facing are in regards to driver sickness and shortages. This is having a large impact at the depot, who are doing all they can to address the situation. As some of these difficulties arise with out much warning and we can't predict which service will be affected, it isn't always possible or feasible for us to update the app or our social media with cancellations in time for customers.

Although I cannot promise any short-term resolution to this problem, we are hopeful that these staffing issues will be resolved with in the next couple months. Please be assured that our scheduling teams are closely monitoring the situation and making changes wherever possible. We are recruiting more drivers and we appreciate your patience while we move through the motions of completing their onboarding and training."

(08 Mar 2024, 10:46 pm)Storx wrote Seems like the problems down South are now starting to creep in up here.

Not sure whether it's driver related but it appears there's been a few cancellations at Blyth and Ashington today and a complete lack of buses left due to breakdowns and accidents.

It's almost like you can't keep taking contracts on and not send buses to actually do the work or the buses they do send are near 12+ years old.

Not sure how accidents, including a car driving head on into a bus, mean that problems are "creeping in". Ultimately they can only carry a certain percentage of spares and, while I've been critical of their engineering in the past, it's very clear that the only reason Ashington appear to have missed runs to due a lack of a bus is due to an accident. 

Equally, what's wrong with them taking on contracts and using older stock? All of the buses allocated to recent contract wins (434, 777) have completed their duties today as far as I can tell?

(08 Mar 2024, 11:36 pm)mb134 wrote Not sure how accidents, including a car driving head on into a bus, mean that problems are "creeping in". Ultimately they can only carry a certain percentage of spares and, while I've been critical of their engineering in the past, it's very clear that the only reason Ashington appear to have missed runs to due a lack of a bus is due to an accident. 

Equally, what's wrong with them taking on contracts and using older stock? All of the buses allocated to recent contract wins (434, 777) have completed their duties today as far as I can tell?

I never mentioned engineering, more issues of vehicle shortages, in general.

The 434/57/57A is one of the biggest problems at Ashington as there's not enough minibuses so it's taking saloons and deckers which is leaving them short. I'm not even sure what's meant to be running the 57/57A because nothing came up for the Bedlington extension and 2601-3 are totally inadequate.

Blyth's the bigger problem though since they gained the 43/44/45/306 work and got some totally inappropiate Pulsar's capacity wise and some Enviro's which urgently need to be on some easy route not what they are on - ironically buses that Redcar destroyed (as usual). They're very lucky imo that the 15 year old DB300's are little work horses or they've got a good engineering team who look after them as they've not really had the easiest of lives.

(09 Mar 2024, 10:20 am)Storx wrote I never mentioned engineering, more issues of vehicle shortages, in general.

The 434/57/57A is one of the biggest problems at Ashington as there's not enough minibuses so it's taking saloons and deckers which is leaving them short. I'm not even sure what's meant to be running the 57/57A because nothing came up for the Bedlington extension and 2601-3 are totally inadequate.

Blyth's the bigger problem though since they gained the 43/44/45/306 work and got some totally inappropiate Pulsar's capacity wise and some Enviro's which urgently need to be on some easy route not what they are on - ironically buses that Redcar destroyed (as usual). They're very lucky imo that the 15 year old DB300's are little work horses or they've got a good engineering team who look after them as they've not really had the easiest of lives.

Arguably for the 306/308, if the Coast Road was cleaned up more (with further route changes)......Arriva take on all the Blyth - Whitley Bay - Newcastle work (effectively the current 308 & 309) and likewise, GNE take on all the North Shields, Tynemouth, Marden work (effectively the current 306 & 307). Arriva would lose around a PVR of 4-5, but also lose a lot of dead mileage. That would help with Arriva's issues.

But Arriva are yet to see the impact of the ABTRL.

(09 Mar 2024, 10:20 am)Storx wrote I never mentioned engineering, more issues of vehicle shortages, in general.

The 434/57/57A is one of the biggest problems at Ashington as there's not enough minibuses so it's taking saloons and deckers which is leaving them short. I'm not even sure what's meant to be running the 57/57A because nothing came up for the Bedlington extension and 2601-3 are totally inadequate.

There are enough minibuses to cover PVR for the 434 and 57/A, and I believe it was said at the time of the PVR increase that it was an intentional decision to not move up more Solos. Saloons are the spares for that route. 

Bar a bus seemingly being missing for the X22 yesterday (after an accident, a breakdown, and while loaning a bus to Blyth), I don't recall Ashington missing PVR for quite some time so I'm not sure what the issues are that you think are present?

(09 Mar 2024, 10:38 am)L469 YVK wrote Arguably for the 306/308, if the Coast Road was cleaned up more (with further route changes)......Arriva take on all the Blyth - Whitley Bay - Newcastle work (effectively the current 308 & 309) and likewise, GNE take on all the North Shields, Tynemouth, Marden work (effectively the current 306 & 307). Arriva would lose around a PVR of 4-5, but also lose a lot of dead mileage. That would help with Arriva's issues.

But Arriva are yet to see the impact of the ABTRL.

In fairness, it would likely make very little difference as they'd just end up moving buses out elsewhere.

(09 Mar 2024, 10:56 am)mb134 wrote There are enough minibuses to cover PVR for the 434 and 57/A, and I believe it was said at the time of the PVR increase that it was an intentional decision to not move up more Solos. Saloons are the spares for that route. 

Bar a bus seemingly being missing for the X22 yesterday (after an accident, a breakdown, and while loaning a bus to Blyth), I don't recall Ashington missing PVR for quite some time so I'm not sure what the issues are that you think are present?

In fairness, it was Blyth, I was talking about more, it's been struggling for awhile now with cancellations again and loaning buses of Ashington pretty much says they've ran out of spares.

Ashington seemed to be have similar problems yesterday and the Solo's are behaving the past few days, so god only knows what happens when they decide they all need their monthly break.

(08 Mar 2024, 1:16 pm)mb134 wrote Ashington's 7574 has been involved in a head-on collision with a car while on the X21.

Hopefully everyone involved is okay, the pictures show a hefty amount of damage to the bus.

Apparently a 44 has gone into the back of a car near Gosforth Park today, so more issues for the engineers to deal with.

Just curious here and someone might know ,obviously Blyth is a driver shortage, but is the issues at Ashington driver based or vehicle based?

Just looking at tracking, all the caveats etc, it appears that everything that can move at Ashington is out today yet there's still cancellations. From what I can see there's nothing off the road due to a lack of drivers.

Also unless I missed something Ashington has lost 4 vehicles (2853 + 3 Enviro 400 MMC's) and only gained 2 vehicles (1462/1538)? Which will never help matters.

(25 Mar 2024, 12:03 pm)Storx wrote Just curious here and someone might know ,obviously Blyth is a driver shortage, but is the issues at Ashington driver based or vehicle based?

Just looking at tracking, all the caveats etc, it appears that everything that can move at Ashington is out today yet there's still cancellations. From what I can see there's nothing off the road due to a lack of drivers.

Also unless I missed something Ashington has lost 4 vehicles (2853 + 3 Enviro 400 MMC's) and only gained 2 vehicles (1462/1538)? Which will never help matters.

Think 1497 has returned as well

(25 Mar 2024, 12:03 pm)Storx wrote Just curious here and someone might know ,obviously Blyth is a driver shortage, but is the issues at Ashington driver based or vehicle based?

Just looking at tracking, all the caveats etc, it appears that everything that can move at Ashington is out today yet there's still cancellations. From what I can see there's nothing off the road due to a lack of drivers.

It's a chronic driver shortage. The extra single deckers being allocated to X21/22 boards is mental really given it's almost guaranteed the one in front won't be running at least once per day.

They missed the second and third X22 to town, that only happens because of a driver shortage and not vehicle.

(25 Mar 2024, 12:03 pm)Storx wrote Also unless I missed something Ashington has lost 4 vehicles (2853 + 3 Enviro 400 MMC's) and only gained 2 vehicles (1462/1538)? Which will never help matters.

1539 is also back, but needing a new engine. Imagine 7581 will move south when that happens.

(25 Mar 2024, 12:15 pm)mb134 wrote It's a chronic driver shortage. The extra single deckers being allocated to X21/22 boards is mental really given it's almost guaranteed the one in front won't be running at least once per day.

They missed the second and third X22 to town, that only happens because of a driver shortage and not vehicle.

Aye I seen that with the X22, wasn't sure whether it was an error or not - poor tbh. The singles on there are stupid mind.

It's a strange one as I'm just looking through the list now and there doesn't seem to be enough buses on the road at Ashington to run everything even if there was enough driver's. It's a right mess, obviously no doubt there will be engineering shortages aswell.

(25 Mar 2024, 1:38 pm)Storx wrote Aye I seen that with the X22, wasn't sure whether it was an error or not - poor tbh. The singles on there are stupid mind.

It's a strange one as I'm just looking through the list now and there doesn't seem to be enough buses on the road at Ashington to run everything even if there was enough driver's. It's a right mess, obviously no doubt there will be engineering shortages aswell.

There are more than enough to run the services if they had the drivers, but as they don't I believe some are on loan to Blyth (7554 definitely is, and 7532/3 both have been).

Ashington are missing every X21/22 from Newcastle between 1900 and 2000 today, as well as the 1645/1655/1730. As at 1345, there are 3 buses on the X22 out of a PVR of 7. There are a combined 8 on the X21/35 out of a PVR of 13.  The incompetence of the management is reaching new levels, those responsible should be sacked.