(03 Jun 2014, 10:44 pm)Dan wrote It's really getting on and as I'm typing all of this from my phone, I'm in no position to start quoting above posts in the middle of this post and all that malarkey.
Using the overall amount of vehicles in the fleet would be a silly figure to go from, in my opinion. When the majority of those vehicles are occupied on normal commercial work or other contracted services, they're not available in the depot for use on the contracted service which requires a vehicle because its usual allocation is VOR.
And if Compass' spare vehicle percentage is miniscule compared to that of the larger operators, why are they being trusted to operate services on behalf of Nexus? Does that not immediately suggest the service quality will be lower, some journeys will be missed due to no vehicles being available, etc?
Great - just what we want. Extra money in Nexus' back pocket because they want to give the contract to the lowest bidder no matter what the quality will be as a result.
Isn't EU law that the tender goes to the lowest bidder? Nexus may love the bid to go to an operator providing a bid which is much higher - they can't if it is the case re EU law. Their hands are tied.
For all we know, Compass have put their bid in, based on a new vehicle arriving in the depot - either on hire or bought outright, for the deal to fall through, the vehicle to suffer mechanical failure or a whole host of other reasons.
Suppose it isn't that different to GNE bidding for a stack of DCC contracts 10yrs ago and having to acquire deckers from all over the shop in order to fulfill the deal.
There were issues with those acquired vehicles and fortunately, alternatives (although extremely unreliable) were available.