Launching in January was possibly a flaw. January/February is always the quietest time for tourists. Having said that, it allows the service to build up a reputation prior to the busier season returning. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an increase in vehicles soon. The Airlink is no less busy, so I assume the traffic is either new traffic, or is coming from the tram?
It wouldn't take many people switching from Airlink and the Tram to give the single-deck AIRX services the appearance being busy, I wouldn't think.
That would but good but the LEZ introduction kills any plan of that. Not viable to upgrade emissions given their age.
One of those is already being repainted into the Midland Bluebird livery I saw it somewhere online but can’t remember where so I guess we can count these out.
Dundee has the last of its Geminis to remove first before anything else is released.
Said Geminis are Euro 6... its highly unlikely they're going to use vehicles that old on AIRX though.
I was meaning from an age point of view rather than them being compliant.
I'd assume it's because the 100 is contracted to the airport, which Bright Bus isn't?
Yea a tad embarrassing. Breakdowns seem to a frequent occurrence for the Bright Bus fleet as a whole.
It started in the winter this year on New Year's Day don't see what difference it will make.
I they presumably budgeted for losses as a new service and also still had drivers going spare after the closure of the West Lothian network. Where is now the only activities out of Livingston? Are the airport Express, the tours and the coaching operations. Any one of these factors or indeed several others could tip the balance this time round and it does go quiet in terms of airport usage from around the end of October until just before Christmas
Seems to happen way more with Bright Bus though. Granted they inherited rubbish buses from First, but if Bright Bus is to last in the long term, there’s no way the ADL stock will last. It was also McGill’s’ choice to put these knackered Enviro300’s on the route.
As much as I’m not keen on McGill’s as a company I feel like it’s good that they decided to put on more routes to keep jobs for staff who would have otherwise lost their jobs. They will probably use the profit to cover the losses that they had on the West Lothian network and making their existing vehicles work for their money until they generate enough to invest in more.
Yep. Well you do have to remember that the E300s on the Airport Express are now 11/12 years old. Most have been all over the place, at West Lothian, Midland Bluebird etc. They were all Glasgow buses beforehand, so they have had a fair amount of use.
They aren’t all ex First Glasgow some are ex First Borders.
The issue is the only viable alternatives in the McGill’s fleet would be the E200mmc’s, as suggested by someone else. Though in theory you’d think all the ones left in the west will eventually be Midland Bluebird bound after the west gets more Yutong’s at somepoint. For me Xplore Dundee letting go of the Eclipse2’s was daft and that would’ve allowed the E200mmc’s currently on the X38 to be used by Bright Bus instead, those Eclipse2’s instead doing the X38. I’m sure there was a bigger reason behind this though.
I have many criticisms of Stagecoach East Scotland, but the reliability of their E300s is not one of them.
The choice of what to use was limited given the LEZ. The E300s that they chose to use were converted to be Euro 6 back in the First days.