Monday 3 July 2017

Arriva purchases 13 Enviro400 City buses for Chester to Wrexham Sapphire Service

Arriva have invested £3.2 million for 13 new buses which hold design cues from the New Routemaster, such as the glazed staircase for their Sapphire luxury service.

From Arriva Wales

After a £3.2m investment, Arriva will welcome 13 of the most advanced double decker buses into its fleet at a launch event on Thursday 29th June at Water World in Wrexham.

The new buses form part of Arriva’s premium fleet of Sapphire vehicles which will operate on routes between Wrexham and Chester, one of 15 routes that have been upgraded with the Sapphire service.


The new luxury service will see passengers enjoying spacious seating, USB charging points and free WiFi. The bus also comes fully equipped with top of the range display screens and audio announcement equipment that has been specially designed for the visually impaired and those unfamiliar with the route.

The new buses will operate on service number one up to every 10 minutes. Arriva’s Sapphire service guarantees that passengers will be eligible for a refund if they are dissatisfied with the punctuality, frequency and cleanliness of their journey.

Michael Morton, Area Managing Director at Arriva: “We’re exceptionally pleased to welcome such a significant number of buses to the Wrexham depot. The Sapphire service was developed as a result of extensive consumer research, looking at what passengers want when travelling by bus. So we are delighted to be able to respond to that by giving our customers a service they have requested and to help improve the perceptions of travelling by bus.”

The Sapphire service launched in 2013 and since then Arriva has upgraded 174 buses, as well providing their staff with extra training to ensure passengers receive the best possible standard of customer service.

The Enviro400 City is increasing in popularity with the bus companies and hopefully they will show interest in the Wright SRM (two-door, one-staircase New Routemaster)

The Alexander Dennis Enviro400H City is also on London Bus routes 26, 78, 133, 333, 388 and night routes N26 & N133.

Here’s a short news update from LOTS:

Four batches of new vehicles now all in service are London United’s DLEs (30049-69) for route 70, Metroline’s VWH 2266-84 for route 120, Tower Transit’s StreetLites WV 46201-220 for route 236 and Arriva KT’s E20Ds 4076-87 at Harlow for routes 508/509/510. From 1st July Tower Transit moved routes 28/31/328 and 266 from Atlas Road to Westbourne Park Garage (no type or pvr changes).

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