New Buses Orders

[Polo Mint]

RE: New Buses Orders
I am also surprised at the lack of double deckers in a major city like Liverpool. Leeds is a similar sized city as Liverpool and appears to have a lot more double deckers. It is difficult to spot single deckers in central Manchester as nearly every single route is a double decker.

(13/03/2013 22:27)507009 Wrote:  Absolutely agree Gillmoss, very well said.

I was in Manchester last Saturday and their buses are surely worse than ours in terms of vandalism. One of their 10-plate hybrids in particular had a number of etched windows, most seat backs near the rear having graffiti damage, burns or both and the window seals also graffitied. To me it looked worse than an unrefurbished Speke B7TL which is four years older. I like Manchester as a city but it's clearly got issues with vandalism that aren't preventing buses of the same size from being ordered as seen here. Evidently Birmingham has the most serious vandalism problem on buses in the country, yet it has a large proportion of deckers too.

I'm not sure Arriva have directly used vandalism as an excuse despite their Green Lane fleet being unacceptable in terms of its capacity - I'd add Bootle as well which uses double deckers mainly on routes which avoid city centre Liverpool. Stagecoach Merseyside's approach is absolute nonsense in my opinion and for Rock Ferry to be receiving Enviro400s of 2006 vintage while Gillmoss struggles on the 20/21/82/86 with Enviro300s, Darts and dated Tridents is a disgrace.

It's also worth mentioning that Birkenhead's 59-plate Pulsars have their fair share of vandalism, certainly comparable and arguably worse than Speke and Bootle single deckers. I would suggest Green Lane has the highest level of vandalism on Merseyside but hardly enough to prevent deckers. The St Helens Pulsars, however, seem to have little vandalism and are used amongst others on the Liverpool route which needs double deckers the most in my opinion, the 10/10A.

Is it really worth loosing/missing out on revenue for the sake of vandals?

Both First and Stagecoach use brand new hybrids in some of the roughest areas in Manchester (routes 18 and 43).

Hopefully it is some kind of shortage and will eventually be sorted out.