(15 Sep 2015, 7:09 pm)DaveyBowyer wrote Saw a message on Facebook this morning about capacity issues on service 7. If service 7 continues to grow, do you think that we will see more deckers in the region next year with either of the following happen?I still can't see any more double deckers being ordered for the 7 anytime soon, the Enviro 400's were bought for the busiest runs on the service and many of the boards the Pulsars operate don't really have many problems that I am aware of, the only issue with them is they stupidly don't have Arriva's usual Pulsar seating layout instead they have some different wacky design which loses four seats (so instead of 44 seats, they have 40). Also double deckers would be too much on a nighttime. My dream for Sapphire 7 is a half hourly Sunday service which probably won't happen anytime soon.
Option 1: 15x new buses for X21 / X22, 5x 14 plate E400s from Ashington to Belmont / Darlington, 1x 14 plate E400 remaining at Ashington as a spare, 1x 09 plate and 1x 14 plate going to either Belmont or Darlington (1 per depot or both at 1 depot), 57 plate E400s bar 1x remaining at Ashington as a last resort spare, being cascaded nationally as Sapphire spares for any routes around the country.
Option 2: 5x new buses for service 7, 8x new buses for X21 / X22, 7518 transferring to either Belmont or Darlington as spare, 2x 57 plate E400s remaining at Ashington as spares with the other 7 being cascaded nationally as spares for any Sapphire routes around the country.
I would quite like to see Darlington get some double deckers for the peak time Bishop Auckland College 5/5A as I've seen it the last two mornings and there hasn't been many seats left by Aycliffe Town Centre so I dread to think what it must look like once it gets closer to Bishop Auckland.