Suzy, Drinker Of Coffee

An interesting find this evening, posted to a few of the newsgroups, was the story on the 24dash website about Stagecoach ordering 45 new Volvo/Plaxton single deck coaches for the UK operations of Megabus.com - the Scottish "joint venture" of which is presently awaiting the conclusion of a Competition Commission investigation into their joint venture with Citylink - which has already found it to be "against the public interest". That story is for another day, but in the meantime, there is no mention of this on the Stagecoach corporate site - sure there will be tommorrow though!

There are currently around 40 Megabus workings around the uk, plus duplication, and the "fleet" has not long recently recieved 25 newish Neoplan double deck coaches (remember I saw them on the first morning out, that was just over 21 months ago?) So how can a single deck coach replace those 89/91 seat tri-axle deckers? Well, they'll be fifteen meters long for a start - one quarter more than the standard Stagecoach coach - and with a wheelchair lift etc. included (DDA requirement), they will seat 63 passengers. The MAN (ex-Oxford Tube) deckers seat 64, if I remember rightly. This order had been rumoured for some time, but it is interesting to hear the bodybuilder is different to that which had been speculated by some!