First Manchester

[gilesbus1]

RE: First Manchester

(27/06/2019 10:15)Mrboo Wrote:  Rusholme should of had Vantages in my view as it right next to MRI same as 18 and 53

Rusholme is a bad idea as it means a lot of dead mileage as all routes start at Atherton or Leigh, Rusholme is simply at the wrong end of the route, can you imagine a driver having to start a duty at Rusholme at 3am in the morning in order to get to Leigh for 4am, its simply not suitable, a new site is to be purchased in the Leigh/Atherton area for that, although most likely they might operate out of Diamond's Atherton depot as some routes from there are better operated out of First's depot at Bolton e.g. the 300, 575, 715, 574 etc. In parallel, it may be that the 68 can be better operated from Eccles depot and the 582 better operated from Atherton depot. The other thing anyway is that the first 5 year Vantage period ends in 18 months anyway and therefore they can exit it at that piont if they exit now they get fined for breach of contract, at that time then it will go to re-tender. The other issue will be the total allocation is around 200 vehicles without Vantage so if they are only leasing around 125 how are the other 75 worth of vehicles routes going to be operated? also is the 163 being included as separate rumours suggest that transferring to GoAhead with selected vehicles in a separate deal?

Have heard that Rotala are about to place an order for a large batch of Wright Streetdeck's to operate from both Bolton and Preston depot's, with delivery to commence at the end of the year, so presumably that will mean that ADL Enviro400's start returning at that stage.