(5 hours ago)PH - BQA wrote Agreed that 12 in to replace the 12 17-plates makes no sense, it doesn’t address the true issue of the absolutely dire single deck fleet. It also provides no additional decker capacity, which they’re screaming out for - just look at the amount of peak X18s recently which have been allocated a single decker as evidence of that.
The only way to fix it is to keep those 12 17-plates (which, as you say, not only aren’t the problem but are some of the most reliable buses they have) in addition to 12 new vehicles. That allows you to withdraw all of the Pulsars bar the 5 needed for the 57/A.
And I was told on here that the new local management knew what they were doing…
Yeah agreed, mind I do think Ashington will end up with whatever Blyth is getting rid of, what that is who knows.
13x 59 Plate DB300 + 12x 17 Plate E400MMC seems to be what they've been bought to replace though by the looks of things, which fixes nothing at either depot - Blyth being the fact they have 13 Pulsars or so for a PVR 6 and them being inappropiate on anything but the 553 and X9 and Ashington the reliability issues and too many Pulsar's again.
Hopefully the rumours that they'll keep the DB300's happens and in turn 6 Pulsars go from Blyth and 7 Pulsars go from Ashington instead, I'm sure the DB300's could cope on the X21/X22/35 until a new order in the short/medium term future comes. 1389 - 1419 (can't be bothered to type them all out) need to go anyway.