(05 Nov 2022, 7:36 pm)9920up wrote The point still stands then. The Solos are still needed (or they'd have gone!). Your point is valid in that excess vehicle stocks cannot be maintained.  But, Arriva need to be up front with their customers and politically. Temporary is indisputably a variable. However, if as you intimate,it is the case there's likely no intent to recover what has been publicised as a non permanent change, Arriva need to manage their double speak with customers, MPs, councils and the like. Currently their pledge is to improve what have been described as shambolic services in Darlington. They certainly can't progress towards a goal of improvement whilst behind the scenes be stripping out their assets to minimal values. It would be a reasonable supposition that future planning allied to grant support funding applications and the likewill allow service development and increases beyond their current basement and inadequate levels.

They may still go...they're reserves for the entirety of Arriva Durham County. Next week they may be operating out of Durham, they go where they are needed. Tbh I think you're being a tad unfair...a fleet of 15-20 odd solo's (as had been the case until last week) is reliance, 2 operating in a reserve float capacity is not. You've got to give them some credit for replacing the vast majority with a fleet of nearly new E200MMC's. I agree they are still needed in some capacity, it was your use of the word 'reliant' I had the issue with - Arriva would still have enough vehicles at Darlington if those two solo's both got written off tomorrow as they're official reserves. Think we may have to agree to disagree on this!

Those service changes were described as 'temporary' in a press release that is no longer available on the Arriva website in any case. The only ones still up there are the 2/2a and Sunday frequencies. Arriva are hardly likely to publicise that they're not going to re-increase the services, technically if they re-increase them in 2024 it was still a temporary change...that lasted 4 years. Not that I think that's a good think! In fairness, they're going someway towards improving the service by providing nearly new vehicles, obviously the next step is to make sure they have enough drivers to operate the services reliably on the current 'temporary' frequencies before even beginning to think about re-increasing them. With the way everything is at the minute I think that's a long way off. You can't blame them for offloading the excess vehicles when they don't have the drivers to run them. While I of course agree they're providing a shambolic service, they're still a business and their hands are tied by the lack of drivers. 

I should also point out, it was actually the Omnicities that were the excess vehicles off-loaded. Arriva withdrew them when the town service frequencies were reduced, pushing the Solo's onto the longer distance services. They did do a swap with some Pulsars from Durham for some 11-plate Solo's which did help. At the end of the day the reduced frequencies have allowed them to withdraw life expired vehicles, at a time when the demand is lower and the driver availability is poor. When things pick up within the next 12-18 months i.e. more drivers, then they can provide a more reliable service, then demand returns, profit increases, and they can afford to buy new vehicles and increase the frequencies. But in the short term it's not going to happen. Having said that it would not surprise me in the slightest if at some point Durham gets more Pulsars from somewhere displacing the E200's onto the 49/49A/57/57A and the 11 plate Solo's end up back at Darlington to re-increase the frequencies. Will remain to be seen I suppose!