Stagecoach MCSL - Gillmoss Depot

[Gillmoss 0324]

RE: Stagecoach Merseyside - Gillmoss Depot
Ideally Stagecoach should think of introducing deckers to the 20/21. This is the main Gillmoss route that is suffering capacity wise and unlike the 14's the 20/21's don't have major competition from Arriva. It's naive to say vandalism wouldn't happen, however when Merseybus to GTL ran the Titan's there wasn't excessive amounts of vandalism on these routes and generally there have been a few cases of serious vandalism and burn outs on Stagecoach Manchester deckers in the last few years. Still not stopping them from buying them or introducing them in that region. Overall I can't see any vandalism to a double decker operating in these area's being any worse than some of the vandalism deckers have had in Leeds, West Midlands, Glasgow and London all area's which receive substantial double deck orders.

A possible solution could be extending the routes from Liverpool City Centre to Garston/Liverpool South Park Way via the current 82 route in a similar route that used to exist in MTL/GTL days - dare I say it even hybrid Enviro 400's could be introduced for this route alongside a partnership with Merseytravel etc. Maybe with a few exceptions most other Gillmoss routes can operate okay with full size single deckers - but that's the thing dart's are to small for these routes so really they should be withdrawn and transferred to other parts of the Stagecoach group with full size vehicles like ALX 300/MAN's coming in as replacements.

My ideal situation would be for 20 Hybrid Enviro 400's being introduced for the 20/21, 20-25 ALX400/Trident and/or Envrio 400's aged roughly 8-5 years old coming in at Gillmoss with the remaining operations being full sized single deckers.

Please conisder our comments Stagecoach if you read these pages.