London Bus operators and bus makes. Why do certain operators buy certain buses.

[Mikey C]

It seems to work and as a rule buses in London tend only to move routes when contracts are renewed. As for the Stagecoach E400EVs, a few are now with UNO but the bulk seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth! I guess they are parked up in a field somewhere.

Manufacturers/leaser will surely charge Stagecoach a high leasing cost in future, if they are finding themselves lumbered with unwanted buses at the end of a contract.

A lot of routes just have a pool of buses. If you have 5 routes operating from a garage, all requiring midlife hybrid double deckers, then any of the buses in the garage, which could be from more than one manufactuer, can operate any of the routes, even if under different contracts?

 

[Mark L]

Manufacturers/leaser will surely charge Stagecoach a high leasing cost in future, if they are finding themselves lumbered with unwanted buses at the end of a contract.

A lot of routes just have a pool of buses. If you have 5 routes operating from a garage, all requiring midlife hybrid double deckers, then any of the buses in the garage, which could be from more than one manufactuer, can operate any of the routes, even if under different contracts?

On paper each route has a dedicated fleet of buses although in practice allocations on the day are more fluid, particularly where a garage has several of the same type of bus allocated to several routes (think Sutton and its large fleet of BYD/ ADL Enviro 400EVs.

The relatively early return of Stagecoach’s E400EVs is not without precedent and I would imagine that the risk of this is priced into lease costs. Stagecoach has form here - it previously disposed of a batch of Wrightbus-bodied Volvo B5LHs fairly swiftly. These found a new home with Arriva. Similar buses with Tower Transit went back to the lessor following the loss of the 212 - they were only five years old.

 

[317 forever]

On paper each route has a dedicated fleet of buses although in practice allocations on the day are more fluid, particularly where a garage has several of the same type of bus allocated to several routes (think Sutton and its large fleet of BYD/ ADL Enviro 400EVs.

The relatively early return of Stagecoach’s E400EVs is not without precedent and I would imagine that the risk of this is priced into lease costs. Stagecoach has form here - it previously disposed of a batch of Wrightbus-bodied Volvo B5LHs fairly swiftly. These found a new home with Arriva. Similar buses with Tower Transit went back to the lessor following the loss of the 212 - they were only five years old.

Those hybrids off Tower Transit route 212 were snapped up by Metroline for route 306. After Metroline lost that route to Transport UK they kept the buses at the former Armchair depot to replace Volvo B9TLs.