(4 hours ago)PH - BQA wrote The Streetlites are far, far, worse than the Pulsars. Of the 8 at Ashington, it isn't unusual for 3-4 of them to be off the road at once.
Pulsar wise there have been some repeated failures recently, but overall they're still fairly reliable - I'd certainly be more confident in a Pulsar getting me somewhere than a Streetlite or E400 at present.
The 415/460 cannot be ran by anything larger than a Solo as an FYI, so that plan wouldn't work. I assume they have a plan for when 2601-3 eventually go, but unless it is risk assessed again or has a route change then I believe it was deemed too risky to send anything larger.
Yeah no arguments about reliability but I suppose if they actually had some training how to deal with them, maybe they might work? It's a weird one as they used to be alright at Jesmond but since ending up at Ashington they've turned to crap. Then again those 4 58 Plate E400's which I said would be a nightmare at Blyth have been a rock there aswell, so maybe it's not the buses...
Fair on the 415/460, thought they might have been able to scrape through with those Streetlite's since their shorter and there's Decker's on quite regularly - think they're both 10.8m. Struggling to see where the real issue is though, can't think of any areas where they couldn't get round?
Mind I'm surprised they don't just give up the contract when it runs out, I respect it's money but surely having a microfleet of vehicles for 1 bus now isn't viable, or at least worth it?