(12 Jan 2022, 11:33 pm)Adrian wrote The NECA Joint Transport Committee (JTC) will be asked to give approval for the submission of a Business Case to the Department for Transport for the delivery of 73 battery electric buses in the North East. You'll recall that this was following the announcement late last year, that Transport North East and Go North East's joint expression of interest had been successful, and the second stage of that is the business case.

Transport North East say that the Business Case "represents a total £40.1m investment, with £18.3m sought from the Department for Transport through the Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas fund and the remaining £21.8 provided in match funding from Go North East, Durham County Council and Northumberland County Council." The meeting takes place on 18th January 2022 and the full details and agenda can be found here: https://northeastca.gov.uk/committee-mee...mmittee-6/

I've had a quick read through, and the costings make interesting reading. It's costing around £379,801 per single deck bus and around £435,685 for a double.

The total project cost is £40,135,629 with the ZEBRA grant ask being £18,274,747. It's also stated that the "delivery partners of this project, in particular, the bus operators, will provide £21,860,882 in match funding of the capital costs for buses and infrastructure. This represents 54% of the overall project cost."

With regards to the Durham County Council and the Park and Ride part of the bid, it states: "Fourteen 10.8m circa single deck buses will be in operation on the Durham Park and Ride routes. Early market engagement has taken place with Pelican Yutong (E10) and Volvo (7900e) to inform the financial model as presented in the financial and economic cases. This demonstrates both options are feasible for operation on these routes, based on potential depots, which are to be confirmed by the tender. Durham County Council would own the vehicles which would be leased to the operator handed back from the operator at the end of the tender period."

For those who just want a quick view in terms of what is happening with ZEBRA, I've started to build an archive on my site. This has the specific extracts on, without going through the full agenda papers etc - https://www.busesandbeyond.co.uk/zebra-north-east/

This might seem a selfish point of view but I really don't understand why Northumberland County Council are forking out for this when it barely benefits them bar a few minibuses running around in the hills affecting no-one. Any money from Northumberland should be going towards Arriva (regardless to opinion) and their express work which actually impacts the majority of the county.

It should be North Tyneside / Newcastle who's forking out the money considering the number of them purely on the Coast Road. Complete waste of our tax money which could be spent elsewhere ie subsidising more services up Rothbury way etc.

*I'm not counting the 309 it's in Northumberland for the best part of 15 minutes of the route and is dead half the time.