Rubbish! Have you seen the price of diesel fuel lately?Somebody wrote:The only real benefit of midi-buses is to get into narrow streets that can't take normal buses, and in that case, you have to wonder if these small streets are a good place for an efficient public transport corridor.
I admit minibuses generally don't last as long as the big ones, but they're cheaper, and there's more than one kind available - are none of them robust enough?
But small buses can be used in the peak as well, to increase the service frequency on the less busy routes.Otherwise there's few advantages - it's not economical to maintain one "off-peak" fleet of minibuses and full size buses for peak, or different fleets of buses for different routes & different rosters etc. Savings are small and not worth it.
As for different fleets of buses for different routes, some British bus companies have come to the opposite conclusion. Don't underestimate the effect of branding! Having buses dedicated to a particular route enables route details to be painted onto the outside of the bus, resulting in a greater awareness of the route by potential passengers.
What are the disadvantages of having different kinds of buses? There's a very slight maintenance disadvantage of having a non uniform fleet, but that's it - and the Adelaide bus operators don't have uniform fleets anyway! If this were an issue, an easy solution would be to tender the route out on its own instead of as part of an area contract.