(02 Nov 2017, 9:05 pm)mb134 wrote That page contains a link to all right hand drive versions, including the 11.5m variant. 

So, 1573 has been off the road for months with engine failure. The batch on the X1 are constantly off the road with issues. Every single time, without fail, that I've travelled on a Streetlite operated X18/20 it has been late, and completely unable to make up time until a period of sufficient layover. Which routes are 4653/9/64 usually allocated to at Ashington? Yep.

Yes, a link because the Streetlite Max is related to the Streetlite (so is relevant to include a link from one page to another). We'll have to agree to disagree on this one, but I'm sure if you ever saw a Wrightbus sales sheet for one of these buses, it would not say "midibus".

Without wishing to get too hung up on your statement that this type of bus is not a full-size single deck, and drawing away from the main intention of the post, an excerpt from the "Midibus" Wikipedia page is below:
"A midibus is a classification of single-decker minibuses which are generally larger than a traditional minibus but smaller than a full-size single decker and can be anywhere between 8 metres (26 ft 3 in) and 11 metres (36 ft 1 in) long."

As the Streetlite Max is 11.5m in length, it's a full-size single deck bus. Operators will continue to use them for this purpose, because that's what the bus was built for.


With regards to your specific examples - yes, there have been a few problems (I did say 'by and large'). A major component failure so early on in the life of a bus is worrying and I expect Arriva will be chasing this up with the vehicle manufacturer. Something happening on one bus does not accurately represent the general reliability of this vehicle type. It shouldn't happen but does: faulty engines, gearboxes etc, can go through production and pass a PDI without flagging any issues. I can't recall a single major component failure on one of Go North East's comparable Streetlite Micro-Hybrids, and I'd be inclined to suggest that these operate similar heavy-endurance routes, but are probably out longer (early, later, and 7 days a week now that they're used on other work on Sundays).

I believe Go North East did have a few teething issues with their Euro 5 bog-standard 'Streetlite Max' buses at Deptford on the "Drifter" 60 service. These have seemingly been overcome now: the after-support from Wrightbus allows little niggles to be fixed and tweaks to be made to the programming of the units sitting behind the scenes. If this happened on Go North East's early Streetlites, has it happened on Arriva's early Streetlite Micro-Hybrids on the "MAX" X1 service?

I'm not sure what relevance the X18/X20 has to this debate. The timetable for these services have not been designed with a bus sitting at 50mph in mind: they've been built in the knowledge that a bus that can exceed this speed will be allocated. Of course a Streetlite, limited to 50mph, would not be able to keep to time on these routes.