(27 Jul 2024, 10:12 pm)stagecoachbusdepot wrote There was three or four days in the middle of June when half the runs were operated by closed top B9s. Presumably because they have zero spares given the stupid purchase of the non compliant B9s which seem to be spending the summer depreciating in Percy Main depot. Baffled me why anyone would pay upwards of ten quid to sit on a normal service bus though the runs I saw looked understandably dead - novel approach to driving growth. You have to wonder what GNE would be like if they ever appointed a competent management team.
To be fair in terms of deckers at PM, the 63 plates are the best they've got...
Quite a poor show that they seem content to put closed top buses on a sightseeing tour which is advertised as being an open top service and on such a regular occurrence too, rather than having to pay £50 a day to send one of the non CAZ compliant B9TLs into Newcastle for the Toon Tour.
I remember when Blackpool Transport converted their Marton Mere Holiday Camp route 20 into their 'City Sightseeing Blackpool' service, one day a standard closed top decker turned up and some people actually ended up not boarding the service purely because it wasn't an open topper. Think Xplore Dundee had to send out an E400MMC on their open top tour of Dundee at least once last year too.