London Buses Route 173 to be served by double deck buses

News has come in that London Buses Route 173 has been re-awarded to Arriva London with New Double Deck buses.

The Peak Vehicle Requirement (PVR) will increase from 12 buses to 15 buses. Currently, the route uses the Enviro200 Single Deck Buses and they will be upgraded to Double Deck buses by October 2015. The exact start date is 17^th October 2015, which is the start date of the new contract for Arriva London.

Route 173 starts from Little Heath (King George Hospital)and goes to Beckton Bus Station (for Docklands Light Railway) via Chadwell Heath, Becontree Heath, Dagenham and Rippleside; it operates from Barking (DX) Garage.

In other news, coming from London Omnibus Traction Society (LOTS) on Tender renewals...

The following TfL contracts have been announced today:

Tranche 494

·         174 re-awarded to Stagecoach East London with existing diesel double deck, PVR 21, start date 17 October

·         296 re-awarded to Stagecoach East London with existing diesel single deck, PVR 6, start date 17 October

·         339 re-awarded to Tower Transit with new and existing single deck, PVR 9, start date 31 October

·         347 awarded to Arriva Kent Thameside (currently Blue Triangle) with new diesel single deck, PVR 1, start date 17 October

·         385 re-awarded to CT Plus with existing diesel single deck, PVR 1, start date 17 October

·         496 re-awarded to Stagecoach East London with existing diesel double deck, PVR 8, start date 17 October

Tranche 496

·         173 re-awarded to Arriva London North with existing diesel double deck, PVR 15, start date 17 October

·         649/650/651 re-awarded to Blue Triangle with existing diesel double deck, PVR 7, start date 2 January 2016

·         673 awarded to Docklands Buses (currently Arriva London North) with existing diesel double deck, PVR 1, start date 17 October.

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See Also

Video of London Buses route 66 in Double Deck operation.

Image attribution\
"Arriva London T12 LJ08 CVG" by Editor5807 - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arriva_London_T12_LJ08_CVG.JPG#/media/File:Arriva_London_T12_LJ08_CVG.JPG