(Yesterday, 8:54 pm)Superman wrote The case has already been put forward. New double decker vehicles are coming for Ashington in 2026, along with 14 new electric vehicles for Blyth, 14 electric vehicles for Durham, 21 electric vehicles for Darlington and another two dozen Volvo Evoras for Tees Valley.

Arriva Yorkshire also due to receive 50 new vehicles by Christmas, the same senior management team making all of these calls (and arguably the Yorkshire fleet needs the investment much more to be honest).

They can't change the world overnight.

I am also aware that the senior engineering personnel have also been shown the door already due to the failures in the north specifically. The Head of Engineering and the Engineering Manager both not seen for a while and the former already advertising the need for a new job on linkedin.

A business left to rot by DB, investment now starting you flow, but it all takes time.

While this is good to hear, and I thank you for confirming that the new vehicles are on the horizon, it's possibly all too little too late for many people. Absolutely agreed that they cannot change the world overnight, but they have made poor decisions for years at this point - irrespective of DB ownership.

It has been rather irresponsible to constantly increase the workload, especially given how demanding that workload is, if you don't have adequate resources to cope with that. Lots of those increases have happened post-DB too. Asking vehicles which are already high mileage to do extra evening X15 duties, to go to Wooler/Kelso, and extra X30s is madness. I get that these will all have increased depot income, and I understand that at this time that is important, but surely there needed to be a plan to make sure all this additional work was going to be operated by suitable machinery? The sheer number of breakdowns on these routes because of how much abuse the vehicles are getting is ridiculous, and cannot help the company long term with customer perception. 

It is all well and good senior staff being disposed of, but if the people on the ground deciding if a vehicle is fit for service remain the same then nothing will change. There are a number of examples of this at Ashington alone recently, I've already pointed out 1574 but others are just as bad.   

Same can be said for vehicle allocation. I've made the point on here before, but the amount of runs which are booked a single decker which I see every day with standing loads is ridiculous - on services which are generally double deck allocated I will add, so it's not as if a double decker would be out of the question. Even outside of the capacity issue though, Ashington literally have 3 route branded vehicles (not counting the 17-plate MMCs as that's defunct now) yet it seems like a daily challenge of how badly they can allocate them. 1479 seems to do anything but a 777. Once again, all of this is back to the people running it day to day - not DB investment. 

I fully understand that UK Bus, as a whole, suffered under DB and it will take time to rectify this properly. The amount of investment needed to fix all of the problems at Arriva is likely scary even for the new ownership, however all of that investment is for nothing if the basics aren't getting done properly.

(Yesterday, 8:54 pm)Superman wrote The case has already been put forward. New double decker vehicles are coming for Ashington in 2026, along with 14 new electric vehicles for Blyth, 14 electric vehicles for Durham, 21 electric vehicles for Darlington and another two dozen Volvo Evoras for Tees Valley.

Arriva Yorkshire also due to receive 50 new vehicles by Christmas, the same senior management team making all of these calls (and arguably the Yorkshire fleet needs the investment much more to be honest).

They can't change the world overnight.

I am also aware that the senior engineering personnel have also been shown the door already due to the failures in the north specifically. The Head of Engineering and the Engineering Manager both not seen for a while and the former already advertising the need for a new job on linkedin.

A business left to rot by DB, investment now starting you flow, but it all takes time.

I think the problem as well, is that modern deckers are getting the same expectations put on to them as their Cummins L10 / Gardner / Volvo D10 grandparents did - but now faced with tighter emission controls and city focussed gearing.

Even the B9TLs whilst decent, haven't got the legs / durability the Volvo Olympian had on longer distance work.

GNE although didn't always get it right, did eventually go down the route of 1x spare for every 7 or 8 new vehicles purchased in their golden era when they ordered heavily around 2013-14. 

I think Arriva need to be doing the same IMO.

Also, if Arriva do go down the ADL route, will ADL be offering the 7 speed Voith DIWA.8 NXT?

I know Wrightbus are offering this on the Ultroliner powered by Cummins - but if Volvo came to their senses and produced a new two axile B8TL with this gearbox, I reckon they'd be as good as the Leyland Olympian / MCW Metrobus!

(9 hours ago)L469 YVK wrote I think the problem as well, is that modern deckers are getting the same expectations put on to them as their Cummins L10 / Gardner / Volvo D10 grandparents did - but now faced with tighter emission controls and city focussed gearing.

Even the B9TLs whilst decent, haven't got the legs / durability the Volvo Olympian had on longer distance work.

GNE although didn't always get it right, did eventually go down the route of 1x spare for every 7 or 8 new vehicles purchased in their golden era when they ordered heavily around 2013-14. 

I think Arriva need to be doing the same IMO.

Also, if Arriva do go down the ADL route, will ADL be offering the 7 speed Voith DIWA.8 NXT?

I know Wrightbus are offering this on the Ultroliner powered by Cummins - but if Volvo came to their senses and produced a new two axile B8TL with this gearbox, I reckon they'd be as good as the Leyland Olympian / MCW Metrobus!

 Good to see the EVORA  been a poplar choice for arriva North East  there proven a big success down at Redcar for the x4s

(Yesterday, 10:09 pm)PH - BQA wrote While this is good to hear, and I thank you for confirming that the new vehicles are on the horizon, it's possibly all too little too late for many people. Absolutely agreed that they cannot change the world overnight, but they have made poor decisions for years at this point - irrespective of DB ownership.

It has been rather irresponsible to constantly increase the workload, especially given how demanding that workload is, if you don't have adequate resources to cope with that. Lots of those increases have happened post-DB too. Asking vehicles which are already high mileage to do extra evening X15 duties, to go to Wooler/Kelso, and extra X30s is madness. I get that these will all have increased depot income, and I understand that at this time that is important, but surely there needed to be a plan to make sure all this additional work was going to be operated by suitable machinery? The sheer number of breakdowns on these routes because of how much abuse the vehicles are getting is ridiculous, and cannot help the company long term with customer perception. 

It is all well and good senior staff being disposed of, but if the people on the ground deciding if a vehicle is fit for service remain the same then nothing will change. There are a number of examples of this at Ashington alone recently, I've already pointed out 1574 but others are just as bad.   

Same can be said for vehicle allocation. I've made the point on here before, but the amount of runs which are booked a single decker which I see every day with standing loads is ridiculous - on services which are generally double deck allocated I will add, so it's not as if a double decker would be out of the question. Even outside of the capacity issue though, Ashington literally have 3 route branded vehicles (not counting the 17-plate MMCs as that's defunct now) yet it seems like a daily challenge of how badly they can allocate them. 1479 seems to do anything but a 777. Once again, all of this is back to the people running it day to day - not DB investment. 

I fully understand that UK Bus, as a whole, suffered under DB and it will take time to rectify this properly. The amount of investment needed to fix all of the problems at Arriva is likely scary even for the new ownership, however all of that investment is for nothing if the basics aren't getting done properly.

In fairness, it's questionable why Ashington should keep getting all this investment. It's not just the vehicles which are to blame as it's clear as day there's issues beyond that.

Ignoring the X14/X15/X18/X20, nothing at Ashington is more difficult that what Blyth runs so it's not an excuse and what investment are they getting - absolutely buggar all, yet again. It's embarrassing the last new vehicle at the depot (and I'm not counting the ex Jesmond routes as there's zero reason for anyone in SE Northumberland to use them) are 2012 Pulsar's which ironically are totally unfit for purpose. I'm also not counting the buses now in Leeds either. 

No doubt, the shite that Ashington has wrecked to the heavens, is going to end up at Blyth now to see off the much more superior DB300's and no doubt the issues will follow. If you're an engineer at Arriva you might aswell break everything because it's the only way you seem to get new buses, Redcar for example aswell. No doubt the staff there have a similar opinion since they're never out a Sunday aswell while all but 2 of the 59 Plate DB300's are out being a rock, as usual.

Thank god there's a train with 90's stock which are a hell of lot of superior so I don't have to deal with them anymore tbh.

(2 hours ago)Storx wrote In fairness, it's questionable why Ashington should keep getting all this investment. It's not just the vehicles which are to blame as it's clear as day there's issues beyond that.

Ignoring the X14/X15/X18/X20, nothing at Ashington is more difficult that what Blyth runs so it's not an excuse and what investment are they getting - absolutely buggar all, yet again. It's embarrassing the last new vehicle at the depot (and I'm not counting the ex Jesmond routes as there's zero reason for anyone in SE Northumberland to use them) are 2012 Pulsar's which ironically are totally unfit for purpose. I'm also not counting the buses now in Leeds either. 

No doubt, the shite that Ashington has wrecked to the heavens, is going to end up at Blyth now to see off the much more superior DB300's and no doubt the issues will follow. If you're an engineer at Arriva you might aswell break everything because it's the only way you seem to get new buses, Redcar for example aswell. No doubt the staff there have a similar opinion since they're never out a Sunday aswell while all but 2 of the 59 Plate DB300's are out being a rock, as usual.

Thank god there's a train with 90's stock which are a hell of lot of superior so I don't have to deal with them anymore tbh.

It's very simple - they operate significantly more miles on more demanding work. You can't just ignore the X14/15/18/20, the combined PVR of those services (at present) is 18 - so they need as an absolute minimum 18 suitable deckers. Obviously you need slightly more than that to cover for inspections, MOT etc. so you need 20-ish if you're purely covering those routes. Obviously though, you don't want to just massacre the same 20 vehicles day in day out - so some flexibility is needed, and you realistically need a much larger pool to take from. This is the current situation with the 17 and 72-plates, but the 72-plates are plagued by electrical issues (from new) and the 17-plates are now 8 years old and are starting to show it - they're all well above 500k miles now, with a couple north of 600k. 

There's obviously the X16, 777, X30 too which you left out of your list. On top of that, despite the X21/22 being similar to the X10/11 in terms of high speed sections, the X21/22 are of course higher mileage runs. 

Ultimately no DB300 at Blyth has (bar an occasional day here and there if loaned) ever had to deal with any actual express work - every single decker currently at Ashington has worked the express services for multiple years at one point. Even the single deckers are worked harder on the X16 than any of the Blyth ones are. It's easy to see why they get the investment, you don't want buses that are serving rural Northumberland suffering from huge reliability issues when serving those communities is a huge part of your income through council funding.

(1 hour ago)PH - BQA wrote It's very simple - they operate significantly more miles on more demanding work. You can't just ignore the X14/15/18/20, the combined PVR of those services (at present) is 18 - so they need as an absolute minimum 18 suitable deckers. Obviously you need slightly more than that to cover for inspections, MOT etc. so you need 20-ish if you're purely covering those routes. Obviously though, you don't want to just massacre the same 20 vehicles day in day out - so some flexibility is needed, and you realistically need a much larger pool to take from. This is the current situation with the 17 and 72-plates, but the 72-plates are plagued by electrical issues (from new) and the 17-plates are now 8 years old and are starting to show it - they're all well above 500k miles now, with a couple north of 600k. 

There's obviously the X16, 777, X30 too which you left out of your list. On top of that, despite the X21/22 being similar to the X10/11 in terms of high speed sections, the X21/22 are of course higher mileage runs. 

Ultimately no DB300 at Blyth has (bar an occasional day here and there if loaned) ever had to deal with any actual express work - every single decker currently at Ashington has worked the express services for multiple years at one point. Even the single deckers are worked harder on the X16 than any of the Blyth ones are. It's easy to see why they get the investment, you don't want buses that are serving rural Northumberland suffering from huge reliability issues when serving those communities is a huge part of your income through council funding.

Aye don't disagree but I'd deal with it differently personally and deal with the real headache which appears to not being dealt with again the X93/X94.

Personally I'd get 8 deckers at Redcar and get the 4 72 Plates back to Ashington and that's your 19 buses for the X14/15/18/20 with the 17 Plates acting as backups with the 7556/7/8/60/62 joining immediately to plug the gap when the electrics come to Blyth. If Ashington can't keep the rural buses running with 31 decent deckers then they're doing something very wrong imo. What happens to the B9TL's, someone else can decide. 

The 64/15 plate Enviro's are ideal for the 35/X21/X22, for now imo and there's no realistic place for them without dumping them at Blyth which are much better invested in new electics and the X10/X11 and 308, in particular, deserve investment. We're not talking about something like the 57/57A which are marginal routes, these are flagship or should be flagship routes anyway and because of interworking patterns that's every route.

Ironically Arriva being Arriva, I wouldn't put it past them to get new buses at Ashington, and some of the newer buses leaving for Whitby and Liverpool; something has to replace their DB300's down there and it wouldn't be the first time it's happened. The new E200MMC's at Darlington are already pretty much guaranteed to be going aswell.

IMHO all of Arriva Northumbria’s routes should be double decker operated except for the 1,2,57,57a,415,434,553 and the 777 where a saloon would be OK for those in terms of passenger capacity. Putting salons on any service into Newcastle is always asking for trouble, especially during the peaks.

Until we see the start of the BYDs (and hopefully other new vehicles in time) appearing perhaps the local management should be aiming to acquire a few more spare vehicles that could be available in the wider group to give the existing aging/knacked fleet a bit more slack. Of course, I realise that will probably result in another “robbing Peter to pay Paul” situation again.

(14 minutes ago)solsburian wrote IMHO all of Arriva Northumbria’s routes should be double decker operated except for the 1,2,57,57a,415,434,553 and the 777 where a saloon would be OK for those in terms of passenger capacity. Putting salons on any service into Newcastle is always asking for trouble, especially during the peaks.

Until we see the start of the BYDs (and hopefully other new vehicles in time) appearing perhaps the local management should be aiming to acquire a few more spare vehicles that could be available in the wider group to give the existing aging/knacked fleet a bit more slack. Of course, I realise that will probably result in another “robbing Peter to pay Paul” situation again.

Yeah can't disagree to be honest, keep forgetting about the number of singles around. 

I'm surprised they don't do a swap with Darlington for 1602-7 for the 57/57A. I know Streetlite's etc are crap, but the short length buses which are a complete headache for Darlington would be ideal for it. Could probably throw them on the 415/434 aswell really and I'm sure Durham could give up 1579/80 aswell to tidy the batch up (displaced by electrics?). Let's be honest the 1/2/57/57A/434 aren't getting new buses anytime soon and it sorts out the singles for awhile and get rid of the short Solo's which are also completely inappropiate on the 57/57A. 

Ignoring the 553 headache, it means they can start working on making Northumbria Pulsar free as they're the more unreliable vehicles lately over the deckers, even at Ashington.