(17 Feb 2021, 11:03 pm)mb134 wrote Yeah it seems cyclical. Those at the top seem to think large scale investment needs to happen two or three times per 10-15 years, still living in the years of Leyland/Volvo Olympians... If you look at Arriva as a whole, there has been investment at a more steady pace in other regions, Yorkshire, Merseyside and some of the ones down south spring to mind.

DB, ultimately, don't control the day to day goings on at ANE. The regional MD is responsible there, for things like shoddy presentation and deteriorating reliability - lets not forget the new MD has an engineering heavy CV, so its surprising that the overall standard appears to have nosedived since he took over the show.

Yeah definitely agree with the local stuff, probably budget stuff with Covid not helping as Andros said. We have to give them credit for trying to keep services as much as they could which you can't really fault them and they were the only one of the big 3 to restore everything back to pre covid levels in the Summer.

I know there's a lot of Arriva / GNE discussion on here but Stagecoach needs a mention here mind as out of the big 3 north of the Tyne they are by far the one in the biggest trouble fleetwise and the lack of investment there is just the same really, especially on singles. God knows what they're planning to do with no investment, an incoming LEZ and approximately 51 MAN buses which tbh are junk and they've just repainted one of the ALX 300's so they're going nowhere. Not to mention the aging Enviro 400 fleet and the hybrids which are having similar breakdowns to Ashington.

Just thought I'd bring that up when you mentioned the cycle patterns as they both do it, but once you start buying junk (let's be honest they are compared to Leylands etc) with poor engines and turbos they aren't going to last 15 years especially on hard work.