All Over London Bus Blog: The wrong batch of Buses?

Route 153 operates between Finsbury Park and Liverpool Street. The route is operated by CT Plus and based at their only London based garage: Ash Grove (HK). This garage is also shared by Arriva London. The route has a Peak Vehicle Requirement (PVR) of 10 buses + 1 spare.

The route was successfully re-gained in March, with the contract supposed to begin in February 2013.

There's been quite a few problems with these buses.

As you probably know, Alexander Dennis have different lengths of Enviro 200's. CT Plus chose to order the 10.86m variant of the bus for route 153.

However, TFL didn't tell CT Plus to order this longer variant of the bus. Apparently, even the bus drivers told managers that the buses would be too long, but it seems they were ignored.

For now, these buses have entered service on route 153, with 10.25m variants on the way for February in time for the new contract.

So I advice you to take the chance to ride these buses before they are either returned to the factory or are transferred elsewhere in the company.

Now, the buses themselves contain the following features:

- a batch of 11 Buses (DA2 - DA12)

-a weight of U.W. 7894 KGS

-a body length of 10.86 metres

-a horsepower of 140 on a Alison 2100 Series Gearbox with a Cummins isBe Engine

-a seating capacity of 31

-Estaban Civic seats

Here's the fleetlist:

DA2 - YX62DHC - body no. C233/1

DA3 - YX62DHD - body no. C233/2
DA4 - YX62DHY - body no. C233/3