Has anyone managed to ride the electric Metrocity GNE has on trial at the moment? I wondered what your thoughts of it were.

I haven't been on it myself, but having watched a few videos of it on YouTube it doesn't seem like the most peaceful sounding electric bus ever, or at least not when accelerating over 30mph.

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London's new Caetano e.City's on the other hand sound very peaceful. Granted being in London it's probably trundling along gently & not having to accelerate onto the Tyne Bridge from a standing start to 40/50mph. But still, listen to this:

Forgive me if this does not warrant a new thread but looking through Flickr I couldn't help wonder if a list of former demonstration vehicles could be compiled and reasons for success or failure. I wondered why the B8RLE didn't match up to the Streetlite when it was trialled on the 20.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/nor...630671.amp

Wonder how this will affect buses coming in and out of Gateshead/Newcastle as it mentions closing certain roads to buses.

(Mods please move if posted in the wrong place)


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"Bus with Government's 'Stay Alert' sign gets stuck under railway bridge"

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/some...YbwNB3K8xY

Blyths'1401 previously reported as withdrawn to join the training fleet, was still in service today, making rather slow, smoky progress out of Blyth on service 1

With 8319 being given a new internal look a few months back, are there any plans to upgrade any other Versas.

Was 8319 done by a 3rd party or by Go North East themselves?

Stockton often loan Enviro 300s to Hartlepool when they're short of vehicles.
Today 27175 is on service 1

I've had a mixture of rude and polite drivers recently, although I travelled on the X12 today and the driver was behaving as if nobody else existed. We passed several buses from both Arriva & Go North East and drivers waved, although the driver didn't wave back.

I've always wondered why certain drivers don't reply to a friendly wave when they observe, especially when it is drivers from the same company and depot?

I remembered reading a sign on the cove of Arriva's Sapphire buses that they have a no-quibble money back guarantee, has anyone actually taken advantage of this?

According to their website 

Our Sapphire customer charter sets out our commitments on things like reliability, punctuality, frequency and cleanliness and guarantees you your money back if you’re not satisfied

Clearly from other threads, and my past experience, they don't live up to this, so I'd be interested in seeing what would happen if one tried to claim a refund.

(18 Jul 2020, 4:42 pm)mb134 wrote Given that the B7RLE was available until 2013 I wonder if operators regret, looking back, opting for L94s and then Omnicities over sticking with one standard chassis/body type throughout.

Personally I don't think they would regret it. The markets shifted towards the late 2000s/early 2010s anyway to more lightweight and more fuel efficient vehicles, when reducing fuel consumption was all the rage for green credentials, so I think the shift towards the Versa and Streetlite rather than sticking to a "heavyweight" B7RLE option was going to be inevitable anyway. We saw that with the Citaros, a large number being ordered 2007/2008 and then only 1 small batch in 2010 and 1 small batch in 2013, the last "heavyweight" single decks ordered. Even in most other large companies there was a focus shift from the "heavyweight" offerings of MAN, Volvo and Scania to the "lightweight" full size single decks in the VDL Pulsar and the ADL Enviro 300, and then towards the Streetlite and E200MMC.

I think there's a passenger appeal element to it as well. Stagecoach for example have been quite good at just ordering the same old, and at times it gets to a point where a typical passenger cannot tell a brand new bus from say a 7 year old bus of the same type. Using Manchester as an example, a 64 plate E400 looks exactly the same as the 06 plates they had, so the investment in new buses would go unnoticed to a typical passenger and it becomes almost utilitarian. If GNE had done the same by sticking with Wright then you'd have had the same situation, but they changed to buying something completely different that stood out from the crowd, something that gets noticed as being a new bus to the typical passenger, especially at the time when GNE were introducing all of the different route brands. As a commercial operator you want it known that you are investing in the services to bring improvements, and nothing shows your investment better than the vehicles the passengers board.

The B7RLE wasn't available until 2003 either. Volvo replaced the B10BLE with the rather unpopular B7L, which wasn't very successful at all and was axed after only 2 years effectively. I'd take a guess that a commercial decision was taken at the time, based on knowledge they had then, to order the proven Scania L94UB for their full size single deck offering for 2001-2004 deliveries, rather than switching to the unproven B7L with its smaller engine in the same full sized bus. They had been buying B10BLEs so an unproven drop in engine size could have brought some doubts to real world suitability?
Scania replaced the L94UB with the similar K230UB for Euro4, which Wright still built on, but GNE had made the commercial decision to order the Omnicity rather than sticking with the Solar for standardisation.

Apologies for the long and slightly off topic post