Arriva North West - Birkenhead Depot

[mathias]

RE: Arriva North West - Birkenhead Depot
Managed to get a ride on 6003 (SM15 HVZ) StreetLite 10.8m DF today.

Decent enough buses, but savage brakes. Very smooth ride too, but that may be due to the road surface in the Queensway tunnel rather than the bus itself.

As for seating capacity, BLOTW is wrong, the allocations sheet is wrong, and kuyoyo is right. These are B44F (similar to the North East examples) although these ones have a standee capacity of 25.
44/25, 38/31 or 38/30 and one wheelchair. Either way, the maximum capacity of these StreetLites is 69 passengers.
Compare this to the SB200/Pulsars and the standard capacity is 44 seats/28 standees, or 38 seats/36 standees (maximum capacity 74) so they can roughly carry the same amount of passengers, although the StreetLite does it a lot more efficiently.

Not only do these StreetLites have a lower kerbweight (7987kg), they also use a smaller 4.5 litre engine, and they re-use braking energy as well, so they'll be brilliant on the MPG.
In my opinion, they make the SB200/Pulsars look bloated and inefficient. The lightest Pulsars I've seen are the 12-plate examples that recently went to The Shires and the North East (8885kg), whereas the heaviest are some of Green Lane's Pulsar2s (9164kg).

So these StreetLites are roughly a tonne lighter than most Pulsars (898kg lighter than the 12-plates, 1177kg lighter than some GL examples) can carry almost the same amount of passengers, are shorter, newer and more efficient.
The Arriva accountants must be overjoyed with them!
Even if VDL produced their SB200 in RHD for Euro6, why on earth would Arriva buy them??

Looks like the Pulsar is dead. Long live the StreetLite!