Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

[childwallblues]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(09/07/2014 21:41)FC Pictures Wrote:  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always mean the ticket sales are good,i`m sure given the areas that service runs through the amount of forged and out of date tickets would be considerable,how many of those darling school kids are paying to travel ?,one saveaway chucked out of the window to get their friend on etc.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.

Once a route gets double deckers allocated it makes sense to use them all the time, rather than swap them out in the evening. Bootles 60 and 61 has deckers in the evening when passenger numbers rarely make double figures. I have no doubt that routes 1 and 11 in Wales could operate with Pulsars of an evening. Passenger loadings on the 79 have always justified deckers on the stretch between the City Centre and Wavertree Clock Tower. This can be described as an inner city area were the housing is very old and many are converted into flats and bed sits. There is a large population in this area especially from Poland. You would not have Polish shops otherwise. Belle Vale Shopping Centre also attracts large amounts of passengers especially with the Job Centre, DSS and Morrisons also on site.