Arriva North West - Southport Depot

[CX54 DKD]

RE: Arriva North West - Southport Depot
Perhaps if they sorted issues like that straight away instead of allowing them to persist and develop further, reliability would be better. It was a mistake only sending enough B7s to cover the PVR to be honest. An additional vehicle would allow one to have a 'rest day' or operate a less demanding route for the day. The DLAs seemed to operate the route with reasonable ease upon this kind of logic whilst Skelmersdale had the route.

Birkenhead were given funding for their deckers as part of a project for 'cleaner air' in Liverpool (basically via the Green Bus Fund). Although the cash taken from the 375/385s is high, they've not been subject to that kind of funding thus, they'll have to wait until its deemed financially viable for new vehicles to be allocated to the route. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later and I'd have said an order for early 2014 would sound reasonable as that's no doubt when a further decker order would be placed for DLA replacement in the region anyway. Very difficult to predict how things may play out in reality though so I suppose it comes down to that old adage of 'wait and see'.