(6 hours ago)PH - BQA wrote 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.

Aye don't disagree but I'd deal with it differently personally and deal with the real headache which appears to not being dealt with again the X93/X94.

Personally I'd get 8 deckers at Redcar and get the 4 72 Plates back to Ashington and that's your 19 buses for the X14/15/18/20 with the 17 Plates acting as backups with the 7556/7/8/60/62 joining immediately to plug the gap when the electrics come to Blyth. If Ashington can't keep the rural buses running with 31 decent deckers then they're doing something very wrong imo. What happens to the B9TL's, someone else can decide. 

The 64/15 plate Enviro's are ideal for the 35/X21/X22, for now imo and there's no realistic place for them without dumping them at Blyth which are much better invested in new electics and the X10/X11 and 308, in particular, deserve investment. We're not talking about something like the 57/57A which are marginal routes, these are flagship or should be flagship routes anyway and because of interworking patterns that's every route.

Ironically Arriva being Arriva, I wouldn't put it past them to get new buses at Ashington, and some of the newer buses leaving for Whitby and Liverpool; something has to replace their DB300's down there and it wouldn't be the first time it's happened. The new E200MMC's at Darlington are already pretty much guaranteed to be going aswell.