Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

[FC Pictures]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(09/07/2014 21:14)V671 DVU Wrote:  I do agree to an extent about it being a waste replacing virtually new Pulsars but they did it on the Wirral with the Hybrids replacing 5 year old Enviro 400s which is what age the Pulsars at St Helens are! They'd do an ideal job at replacing the X and Y reg vehicles all over the North West, thus it's a win win isn't it? Oh, trust me, they definitely take enough to take a Pulsar! Packed buses every morning, even the lates are quite full. Whilst I agree deckers aren't needed on lates, but does the 79 need deckers on lates too? I'd be amazed if they did. Plus, think of the extra passengers who'd use the bus if they seen a decker too rather then a packed single decker. Bendys are different though aren't they? Deckers are even shorter then a Pulsar. What would you rather be driving? A decker with everyone sitting or a packed single having to face angry passengers who can't get on? I'm sure a 10/A driver'd back me up here!

Arriva got a sizeable grant towards the cost of the Wirral Hybrids, and the welsh assembly paid for the sapphire conversions on the Enviro400s that came from Birkenhead.The rest that ended up at Bootle have had zero work done to them. Arriva seems to want some deckers at Bootle in case of any rail replacement work they get, mainly on sundays. Older Passengers don`t like deckers as a rule and won`t go upstairs.
A full bus doesn`t always mean the ticket sales are good,i`m sure given the areas that service runs through the amount of forged and out of date tickets would be considerable,how many of those darling school kids are paying to travel ?,one saveaway chucked out of the window to get their friend on etc.
To be fair of all the Speke routes the 79 was ok with single deckers before the route was extended to Halewood, they are full on most 79 lates because the number of routes serving Halewood has been reduced and it only runs every 20 minutes at night, during the day Commanders would be often good enough.
The 79C needs larger buses and has done for years even before the Cadets that are the current standard, Occasionally a Pulsar sneaks on rather than a cadet .The story goes that somebody at Arriva made a clerical error when ordering those buses which should have been Commanders,several Arriva Runcorn people have said this on seperate occasions.