(4 hours ago)Storx wrote 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.
It's very simple - they operate significantly more miles on more demanding work. You can't just ignore the X14/15/18/20, the combined PVR of those services (at present) is 18 - so they need as an absolute minimum 18 suitable deckers. Obviously you need slightly more than that to cover for inspections, MOT etc. so you need 20-ish if you're purely covering those routes. Obviously though, you don't want to just massacre the same 20 vehicles day in day out - so some flexibility is needed, and you realistically need a much larger pool to take from. This is the current situation with the 17 and 72-plates, but the 72-plates are plagued by electrical issues (from new) and the 17-plates are now 8 years old and are starting to show it - they're all well above 500k miles now, with a couple north of 600k.
There's obviously the X16, 777, X30 too which you left out of your list. On top of that, despite the X21/22 being similar to the X10/11 in terms of high speed sections, the X21/22 are of course higher mileage runs.
Ultimately no DB300 at Blyth has (bar an occasional day here and there if loaned) ever had to deal with any actual express work - every single decker currently at Ashington has worked the express services for multiple years at one point. Even the single deckers are worked harder on the X16 than any of the Blyth ones are. It's easy to see why they get the investment, you don't want buses that are serving rural Northumberland suffering from huge reliability issues when serving those communities is a huge part of your income through council funding.