The best laid plans will undoubtedly have been knocked off course by Covid. It simply might be a means of conserving capital in these times. The e300s are now of an age where refurbing is now required though.
Indeed, although i would agree with others that the E300s are getting on quite a bit for such a service. The mileage on them must be pretty high for a service bus.
The One really needs as much capacity as possible - especially in the mornings. It seems so inefficient to be running crush loaded single deckers every couple of minutes. Some sort of workaround to allow double-deckers – maybe with a frequency reduction beyond Dalmuir/Old Kilpatrick seems like the way to go. Post-Covid frequency reductions on the city services (18/38/41/75//77) might free up some buses without investment? But agree that the E300s need a refurb – it’s over a year since I was on one, but the seats were in a shocking state on quite a few of them.
My own view is that the buses getting Euro6 conversions should be refurbished as standard, but i get in the current climate that probably isn't financially viable, even if "other" operators south of the border seem to manage to afford frequent refurbs!... Interior condition has always been a really weak point for FirstGroup as a whole, perhaps not helped by the amount of outsourcing they do. It speaks volumes when even just retrimming the interior of a bus requires an external contractor to come in...
I agree about the seats, it's the same with the ones up here, you'll be hard pressed to find a E300 where the headrest hasn't been ripped or torn. The other major issue with the E300s is the state of the floors and the amount of staining although this affects all First vehicles new between 2011 and 2014. Our 18 year old B10BLEs when withdrawn had floors in better condition than the E300s did when they were only 3-4 years old.
The every 3 mins frequency in the morning pre-Covid seemed like horrendous overkill especially as they naturally come in 3s and 4s just working through Whitecrook and Yoker.
If you cut the frequency it can have a negative affect further out. For example the Dumbarton services run on a near enough 10 minute frequency, if you reduced that to a 15 minute frequency you'd likely end up with an hourly frequency to Helensburgh and a very inconsistent 15/30/15 minute frequency to Balloch.
The 3 minute frequency isn't actually that horrendous, especially not when you consider many other corridors have a similar frequency or even higher, it's just the services don't share the same number so your perception of them is different. The One isn't even that complex you just need to look at it as being three separate services (1/1A/1B, 1C & 1D) rather than one service. When you do that then you quickly realise that it's really no different to the 60/60A & 61 up the Maryhill corridor or the 4/4A/5/6 towards Cathcart, the only difference is "The One" share the same number/brand.
Even at that the 1D is only half as frequent as the 6 was to Mountblow and doesn't go beyond Clydebank very quickly in the day coming from there.
This all comes down to supply and demand. The reason the 6 was more frequent was because it took a longer route serving much more area, so passenger usage between Mountblow and Glasgow as a whole was much higher, whereas the 1D operates a far more direct route covering less area.
