(Yesterday, 10:09 pm)PH - BQA wrote While this is good to hear, and I thank you for confirming that the new vehicles are on the horizon, it's possibly all too little too late for many people. Absolutely agreed that they cannot change the world overnight, but they have made poor decisions for years at this point - irrespective of DB ownership.

It has been rather irresponsible to constantly increase the workload, especially given how demanding that workload is, if you don't have adequate resources to cope with that. Lots of those increases have happened post-DB too. Asking vehicles which are already high mileage to do extra evening X15 duties, to go to Wooler/Kelso, and extra X30s is madness. I get that these will all have increased depot income, and I understand that at this time that is important, but surely there needed to be a plan to make sure all this additional work was going to be operated by suitable machinery? The sheer number of breakdowns on these routes because of how much abuse the vehicles are getting is ridiculous, and cannot help the company long term with customer perception. 

It is all well and good senior staff being disposed of, but if the people on the ground deciding if a vehicle is fit for service remain the same then nothing will change. There are a number of examples of this at Ashington alone recently, I've already pointed out 1574 but others are just as bad.   

Same can be said for vehicle allocation. I've made the point on here before, but the amount of runs which are booked a single decker which I see every day with standing loads is ridiculous - on services which are generally double deck allocated I will add, so it's not as if a double decker would be out of the question. Even outside of the capacity issue though, Ashington literally have 3 route branded vehicles (not counting the 17-plate MMCs as that's defunct now) yet it seems like a daily challenge of how badly they can allocate them. 1479 seems to do anything but a 777. Once again, all of this is back to the people running it day to day - not DB investment. 

I fully understand that UK Bus, as a whole, suffered under DB and it will take time to rectify this properly. The amount of investment needed to fix all of the problems at Arriva is likely scary even for the new ownership, however all of that investment is for nothing if the basics aren't getting done properly.

In fairness, it's questionable why Ashington should keep getting all this investment. It's not just the vehicles which are to blame as it's clear as day there's issues beyond that.

Ignoring the X14/X15/X18/X20, nothing at Ashington is more difficult that what Blyth runs so it's not an excuse and what investment are they getting - absolutely buggar all, yet again. It's embarrassing the last new vehicle at the depot (and I'm not counting the ex Jesmond routes as there's zero reason for anyone in SE Northumberland to use them) are 2012 Pulsar's which ironically are totally unfit for purpose. I'm also not counting the buses now in Leeds either. 

No doubt, the shite that Ashington has wrecked to the heavens, is going to end up at Blyth now to see off the much more superior DB300's and no doubt the issues will follow. If you're an engineer at Arriva you might aswell break everything because it's the only way you seem to get new buses, Redcar for example aswell. No doubt the staff there have a similar opinion since they're never out a Sunday aswell while all but 2 of the 59 Plate DB300's are out being a rock, as usual.

Thank god there's a train with 90's stock which are a hell of lot of superior so I don't have to deal with them anymore tbh.