Surely not a bad thing that a vehicle can’t move with the doors open!Most drivers hate them. Very slow off the mark, can’t move until the doors are completely shut (they take ages to close), next stop announcements far too loud, build quality hit and miss. From a passenger perspective, the COVID window jabs still remain making it a chilly journey at speed in winter.
Tridents generally run to time a lot better on the 10, a stop-start route that only has at most a few minutes over 40mph. These N250UDs would be much better suited on distance work where you’re predominately sitting at 40 or 50mph, i.e the forest work that they seem to do semi-regularly at the moment anyway…
97/98 has had a Running Week by the looks of things, using the 5 tridents that are freed up be lack of school work. Will return to MMC operation, when they’re all back and working that is…
As for the next stop announcements, far from being too loud, they just don’t use them which I think is inexcusable. It’s a fantastic tool for people who don’t know the area and visually impaired passengers. It’s long overdue on every bus in my opinion.