(30 Oct 2022, 8:25 pm)toward6931 wrote i cant find the article now but basically said vehicles were meant to be delivered over 3 years starting 2019, now i think of it i dont know if was talking about the group as a whole not just Manchester.
as for the age of vehicles i know some of the older stuff like ALXs and darts are still mechanically sound from an engineering view and as long as chassis and bodies etc are still good they could probably last another ten years, not that stagecoach should aim for this but i think the 3 main regions of London, Manchester and north east as long as they are in profit should be regularly receiving new vehicles and cascading older stuff to other divisions,
look at the MANviros here in the north east that are getting replaced by older darts, as long as a vehicle is safe to use and does not put passengers at a disadvantage in any way why bother replacing a batch of 2004 registered vehicles if they are still economical to run when say a 2008 batch of vehicles is life expired
Must've been the whole group, definitely hasn't been anything else in Manchester.
Don't disagree with what your saying but let's be honest the MAN buses should be getting withdrawn asap with new vehicles, the fact they're replacing them with Dart's is embarrassing really - mind it'll be interesting to see where the Inverness Enviro 200's end up.
The catch-22 is if you do that you end up chasing things as something else breaks, the early Enviro 200's / Enviro 300's aren't particular the most healthy of things either and should be getting pulled.
Losing the ZEBRA bid in Teesside probably hasn't helped either as it would've sorted the mess out aswell no doubt, believe the 36 was part of that bid.