Hi all,

Me and a couple pals came to realise GNE had been allocating their usual Streetlites more frequently during school times. Obviously, streetlites are branded and allocated to the 301 as they should be, but we have noticed a strange pattern.

On a school day, all buses operating the 301 are usually Coaster or Corporate Streetlites, which are obviously not uncommon on this route.(You sometimes get the odd Versa as well.) However, on a weekend, about 1/3 of the buses running on the 301 are Geminis which really baffles me.

Surely on school days, GNE would allocate more double decker buses to accomodate for the higher frequency of passengers. Kids will obviously be travelling back and forth from school so surely it would make sense for there to be buses with a larger capacity. However, it seems to be quite the opposite. 

Just wondered if anyone else noticed this and if anyone agrees with my opinion. Does anyone know why?

I know it's strange, it just really baffles me.

(8 hours ago)Sirasuke wrote Hi all,

Me and a couple pals came to realise GNE had been allocating their usual Streetlites more frequently during school times. Obviously, streetlites are branded and allocated to the 301 as they should be, but we have noticed a strange pattern.

On a school day, all buses operating the 301 are usually Coaster or Corporate Streetlites, which are obviously not uncommon on this route.(You sometimes get the odd Versa as well.) However, on a weekend, about 1/3 of the buses running on the 301 are Geminis which really baffles me.

Surely on school days, GNE would allocate more double decker buses to accomodate for the higher frequency of passengers. Kids will obviously be travelling back and forth from school so surely it would make sense for there to be buses with a larger capacity. However, it seems to be quite the opposite. 

Just wondered if anyone else noticed this and if anyone agrees with my opinion. Does anyone know why?

I know it's strange, it just really baffles me.

On weekends less deckers need to be used for scholars runs and the X39 as there’s a couple runs that just do scholars and then an odd 307/309/X39 afterwards, or some stuff with the 352 or 327, so more of them are available. On Sundays obv the PVR of the 307/309 is lower so more are available. On Saturday mornings the 307/309 is lower frequency, and on Sundays the 340/341 only uses solos which also could contribute. You’d usually expect companies to use the most fuel efficient buses (streetlites>G2s) however the 301 probably gets rather busy even on Saturdays due to it serving the coast and the Metrocentre, which is probably why they’ll allocate deckers to it.

Stagecoach Walker uses as much of their MMCs as possible even on Sundays, so there’s actually less E300s even on Sundays although the E300s could be less fuel efficient, I’m no expert. It’s likely a combination of all of those factors. Keep in mind back in the day the 1/1A used deckers so the 301 is likely in a bit of a limbo between requiring deckers or singles