(Yesterday, 8:54 pm)Superman wrote The case has already been put forward. New double decker vehicles are coming for Ashington in 2026, along with 14 new electric vehicles for Blyth, 14 electric vehicles for Durham, 21 electric vehicles for Darlington and another two dozen Volvo Evoras for Tees Valley.
Arriva Yorkshire also due to receive 50 new vehicles by Christmas, the same senior management team making all of these calls (and arguably the Yorkshire fleet needs the investment much more to be honest).
They can't change the world overnight.
I am also aware that the senior engineering personnel have also been shown the door already due to the failures in the north specifically. The Head of Engineering and the Engineering Manager both not seen for a while and the former already advertising the need for a new job on linkedin.
A business left to rot by DB, investment now starting you flow, but it all takes time.
While this is good to hear, and I thank you for confirming that the new vehicles are on the horizon, it's possibly all too little too late for many people. Absolutely agreed that they cannot change the world overnight, but they have made poor decisions for years at this point - irrespective of DB ownership.
It has been rather irresponsible to constantly increase the workload, especially given how demanding that workload is, if you don't have adequate resources to cope with that. Lots of those increases have happened post-DB too. Asking vehicles which are already high mileage to do extra evening X15 duties, to go to Wooler/Kelso, and extra X30s is madness. I get that these will all have increased depot income, and I understand that at this time that is important, but surely there needed to be a plan to make sure all this additional work was going to be operated by suitable machinery? The sheer number of breakdowns on these routes because of how much abuse the vehicles are getting is ridiculous, and cannot help the company long term with customer perception.
It is all well and good senior staff being disposed of, but if the people on the ground deciding if a vehicle is fit for service remain the same then nothing will change. There are a number of examples of this at Ashington alone recently, I've already pointed out 1574 but others are just as bad.
Same can be said for vehicle allocation. I've made the point on here before, but the amount of runs which are booked a single decker which I see every day with standing loads is ridiculous - on services which are generally double deck allocated I will add, so it's not as if a double decker would be out of the question. Even outside of the capacity issue though, Ashington literally have 3 route branded vehicles (not counting the 17-plate MMCs as that's defunct now) yet it seems like a daily challenge of how badly they can allocate them. 1479 seems to do anything but a 777. Once again, all of this is back to the people running it day to day - not DB investment.
I fully understand that UK Bus, as a whole, suffered under DB and it will take time to rectify this properly. The amount of investment needed to fix all of the problems at Arriva is likely scary even for the new ownership, however all of that investment is for nothing if the basics aren't getting done properly.