(Yesterday, 11:56 am)busmanT wrote Why not convert them to single doorway?
Better for the passengers and drivers as, although they should only be used on scholars, GNE uses too many dual doorway buses on normal service.
It's the newest dual doors (60 plate) that they have converted as well - clearly expecting to get another three or so so years out of them.
Plenty of older buses to withdraw first!
Just shows the sad state of the fleet to me that the answer is 15 year old vehicles doing frontline work due to complete lack of investment. The fleet is getting on all over the place and it's not just rump routes that are affected nowadays either. The likes of the 10 etc are really overdue something new(er) but as far as I'm aware there's nothing planned with those vehicles going onto the likes of the X5/X15 with those vehicles being the school buses rather than spending money converting dual door vehicles from London which are well past their best.
I'd even say do something like Arriva did by spending money on new buses on a more profitable area and displace their buses up North like at Durham so everyone wins if the state of the North East is that bad they don't want to directly spend money on it.