(20 Sep 2014, 6:38 pm)aureolin wrote It's all good and well, so long as it doesn't come at the detriment of the customer.
I've seen a number of times, and indeed suffered myself, when the vehicle I've been on has broken down, only to find out that a replacement "isn't available". I can understand it on a high frequency route, but couldn't on the two occasions I've broken down on the 50, on a length of the route that isn't covered by any other GNE buses.
Go-Ahead will know what spare percentage of vehicles is most appropriate - not only do they want to save money, but they also want to ensure that their customer satisfaction rate continues to be at a high level (which means that lost mileage has to be kept to a minimum!)
Go North East, like all other companies in the Go-Ahead Group, has targets to meet for lost mileage, as set by Go-Ahead. The individual companies will know the reasons why they are incurring lost mileage, and if lost mileage is being incurred due to no resources being available, the issue will be highlighted and raised in an executive Operations Meeting with Go-Ahead, which will allow the opportunity for individual companies to discuss the issue and make the appropriate changes in the fleet to ensure that it's less likely to happen again in the future.