(19 Jul 2020, 1:03 pm)cainebj wrote 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 

I'll crop your post slightly on my reply as I'll mainly be responding to the quoted section, so that folk don't have to scroll past another big post.

Before the rest of my reply, I'll say that I do think the L94s have been very good servants for GNE and have been solid workhorses for a number of years. I travelled on 5209 on its penultimate day in service and it held 55-60mph on the A19 stretch no problem at all. It's likely that I've been exposed to far more B7RLEs over the years than I have L94s - and obviously with the former being still in production until 2013 I've also experienced more B7RLEs while relatively new and in their prime than I have L94s, which is why I prefer the B7. 

Obviously on a company by company basis, my original post about regret doesn't always work - as you point out the B7L wasn't liked by operators and ultimately flopped. If you were in the market for single decks in that period (as GNE, for example, were), the L94 was the only "heavyweight" option you could really look into. However if you then look at, for example, First, who have a huge volume of B7RLEs but then have an oddball fleet of a handful of 2004/5 L94s and CN94 Omnis. For standardisation, as well as finding spare parts years later, possibly they look back now and think it would have been better to get B7s at the time. 

However looking at it from a slightly different point of view:

I wonder if the fact GNE, in this case, ordered L94s for routes in some cases which would have done absolutely fine with a 7 litre (or lower) engine helped to kill off the "heavyweight" single deck, as you alluded to. In the same way that a B10BLE was overkill for many routes, had operators across the board bought vehicles suited to the routes they were placed on then would we see today a more balanced vehicle selection? Essentially if operators had gone, "okay we might need the L94s for X route, but a smaller engine size would be absolutely fine on X", would we have seen a situation now in which "heavyweight" singles were still being bought for routes which require them, and things like Streetlites being put onto your less demanding services. The same goes for Olympians, for example, not necessary on any of the city routes many operators put them onto - likely led to operators demanding better fuel economy from manufacturers, because they were putting 10 litre engines on services which did 20mph tops all day long.

Apologies to folks coming here to see farewell to L94 posts and having to scroll through these lengthy vehicle type discussions!