Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

[motormayhem1]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
According to what ive heard 9 pulsars will be took in exchange for the deckers but not 100% sure on that.

[sth77]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(13/10/2014 12:00)motormayhem1 Wrote:  According to what ive heard 9 pulsars will be took in exchange for the deckers but not 100% sure on that.

According to my figures we currently have 45 vehicles that are X, Y and V reg, so surely it would make sense for the deckers to replace 26 vehicles that are due to be withdrawn in the next 12-18 months anyway rather than taking pulsars. But I guess we will see what happens.

[CX06 EBK (Administrator)]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
As far as I know, all of the older buses here are either 10.7m Dart SLFs (Plaxton and Alexander) or Volvo B10BLEs. I would have thought the deckers arriving would give a good opportunity to see off some of the Darts which seem to see frequent use on lates just in my recent dealings with the area. As following Arrivas withdrawal pattern for the general area of NW&W all of these buses should be gone within the next 2 years anyway.

[sth77]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(13/10/2014 14:38)Dentonian Wrote:  Maybe some Pulsars would be transferred to balance out the age profile. Also what is the capacity of these older buses - especially the X/Y reg? Presumably, 'deckers are more likely to replace Renowns than the smaller Cadets.

Possibly I suppose. The X reg are darts and cadets and the Y reg are B10BLE'S (2701-15/29/30/32/33) and the B7 Eclipse (2800)

[H101GEV (Administrator)]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
From the fleet list, I make the older stock at St Helens out to be the following:

1 V registered Renown (V-BLU)
1 V registered Dart (V-DJC)
1 X registered Renown (X-BLU)
17 X registered Darts (X-ANC/HJA/OBN)
9 X registered Cadets (X-AJA)
10 X registered Renowns (X-DBT)

Of these, I'd expect the V platers and the X registered Darts to be the top priority for replacement, meaning all of these should be withdrawn once the deckers enter service. The X plate Renown's days look numbered too.

Then, it's a toss-up. Personally, if only older stock does get replaced as part of the decker order, the Cadets should go before the Renowns based on age. Indeed, the non-Blue Bus Renowns should be safe until later in 2015 or early 2016 in some capacity. Whether they stay at St Helens remains to be seen. Otherwise, it wouldn't be too surprising if a handful of Pulsars did leave to replace life expired buses at other depots like Southport.

A further option is to cascade the remaining Renowns at Green Lane to either St Helens or Southport to speed up replacement of X plate buses. Both depots have significant batches of X plate Darts which need replacing one way or the other. The X-DBT Renowns are all built from January 2001 so Arriva have until the beginning of 2016 to withdraw them from routes serving Merseytravel bus stations.

[H101GEV (Administrator)]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(13/10/2014 19:33)Dentonian Wrote:  Are you saying Merseytravel are allowed to put an age limit on buses using their Bus Stations? Surely that's a restriction of trade! Its one thing to include an age limit on Buses running Contracts subsidised by local tax payers, but I've never heard of such a restriction on commercially run bus services in the deregulated environment.

No, I'm not saying that. However, I do seem to remember reading Arriva and Merseytravel had an agreement that they wouldn't use buses older than 15 years in their bus stations. Certainly, this seems to have been adhered to in recent years.

[CX54 DKD (Moderator)]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
To be honest, I wouldn't see the loss of 9 Pulsars as detrimental, particularly if from the 58 plate batch and particularly if it were to the likes of Runcorn in exchange for 55 plate Cadets. After all, there'd only be a 3 year age difference between the vehicles and it's not as if Cadets are unsuitable for a significant number of St Helens' routes that wouldn't otherwise be covered by deckers or Pulsars anyway. Whereas, additional Pulsars would help provide much needed capacity on some of Runcorn's routes i.e. the 79C.

[St Helens Rider]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
The Pulsars would be ideal replacements for the Renowns on the likes of the 34/34A and 89 plus I also feel that the 329 could de with a bit of a capacity boost from Cadets to Pulsars possibly. Given that 24 (out of I think a total of 46 Pulsar 1's & 2's I'm sure someone will correct me if wrong) will now be freed from the 10/10A. Even if say 9 are exchanged, this would still leave 37, which should be able to cover all routes mentioned plus 352/395.

[turbo777]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot
Just seen 2800 at Haresfinch on a 352

[St Helens Rider]

RE: Arriva North West - St Helens Depot

(14/10/2014 11:45)turbo777 Wrote:  Just seen 2800 at Haresfinch on a 352

I wonder if it was on a 352/395 duty or just 352 only.