Boris Johnson's 'Green' Routemaster

[NCT]

Originally Posted by Langur

It's a C21st bus so it's unrealistic to expect rivetted panels. They've taken a lot of care to make the design asymmetrical and fun and I think they've succeeded brilliantly.

True that - though there's so much more you can do apart from rivetted panels. A little more detail around the headlights for example - and more traditional looking windows. The general appearance needs to be toned down a little too - huge curves generally don't work very well on buses.

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by Langur

^ I voted for Ken and was very worried about Boris, so that immediately defuses that argument. The general public do dislike bendy buses. That's why Boris won the election in the first place. It was an eye-catching and popular policy.

No. The general public who actually use the bendy buses LOVE the bendy buses. I was one of them, and not one murmur of complaint did I EVER hear about the 436. It was a joyous replacement for the tiny little RMs that plied the route before it. Big, spacious, quick, acres of standing room when needed, plenty of accessible seats (ALL of which were accessible to those with mobility problems), ample wheelchair and pushchair space, you name it. They were BRILLIANT. And I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool South Londoner, born and bred.

I lived very close to Lewisham for the best part of 15 years. Crossing the roads around there is a bloody lottery even with double-deckers, so the bendies made no real difference: there are plenty of crossing points anyway. So the argument that they were "dangerous" is utter, utter rot.

The reason Boris got elected is because New Labour had become the nation's bogeyman, and, whipped up by the mass media, the public decided to 'punish' them, by kicking out Ken. It didn't help that the media at the time was focusing on alleged corruption in Ken's administration. (Funny that none of said allegations have stuck. Frankly, I think Ken made a mistake by returning to the Labour fold. He should have remained an Independent.)

The Bendy Bus pledge was but one of many idiotic pledges made by pro-car Boris. Car owners are the only ones complaining about the bendies. Never mind that each bendy keeps 1.5 double-deckers off that road. And god knows how many cars.

I also think it's more the reverse. It's people's loathing of Boris that leads them to reject this excellent bus. Can't you detach the two? Ken's legacy is the skyscrapers (good). Boris's legacy will be these gorgeous new buses (also good).

No. Bad. The RM isn't "iconic". I can assure you that no Italian (who isn't a raging bus-spotter) has a f*cking clue what a "Routemaster" is. All they know is that London has buses that are:

* Red,
* Have two floors,
* And doors on the 'wrong' side.

That's it. That's the full extent of their knowledge. The RM hasn't been a major contributor to London's bus services in years now.

That the RM had an open rear platform is no great achievement. So did most of its predecessors. It was normal for London buses to look like this back then.

It's London that matters, not individual mayors.It's a C21st bus so it's unrealistic to expect rivetted panels. They've taken a lot of care to make the design asymmetrical and fun and I think they've succeeded brilliantly.The new bus is superior to the bendy bus in practical terms. It's less likely to block junctions. It's easier for other road users to overtake. It's more efficient with road space and so reduces congestion.

Wrong on all counts. It's worse than the Citaros, because you'll need MORE buses to maintain the same route capacity! So, yes, you'll only have to drive 12 metres instead of 18 to overtake (gosh! a whole FOUR metres!). But you'll have to do so more often.

Oh yes: good luck overtaking anything in South London during the peaks, where even the major arterial roads are mostly single-lane each way.

It equals the bendy-bus's three door entry/exit (unlike other double-deckers).

Big f*cking deal. Rome's SINGLE-DECK buses have had FOUR doors in them since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. And damned few seats. And they're still packed throughout the day!

It provides a much higher percentage of seats than a bendy bus.

Either you work for Boris' department, or you're just trolling. For an urban bus, pure capacity is far more important than number of seats. A Citaro G wins that test hands-down and you know it. "Number of seats" as a primary metric is of interest only to coach users, where trips tend to be much longer than a typical bus journey.

Double-deckers are a demonstrably inefficient use of space, and their nature tends to bias passengers against using the top floor unless their journey is likely to be a long one.

The new bus has two staircases. These take up valuable space. Space the Citaros used for flexible standing, wheelchair and pushchair alcoves, massively improving carrying capacity without sacrificing seats. You won't find many adults standing under the stairs.

Most bus journeys are short, so people will naturally want to hang around the exit doors to avoid fighting their way through the crush when they reach their stop. They'd spend more time climbing and descending the stairs than they would spend actually sitting down. (Either that, or I was imagining all those calls of "PLEASE move RIGHT DOWN THE BUS! PLENTY OF SEATS UPSTAIRS!")

Older people will eschew the stairs (which, naturally, won't have a Stannah Stairlift fitted), so a large percentage of what little seating space remains downstairs will be dedicated to the elderly, people with heavy shopping, dodgy legs, etc. Anyone else who actually wants a seat will have to go upstairs. Which is fine if you're travelling a long distance, but not so attractive if you're only on for a few stops. But you can't stand upstairs, so downstairs it is.

And, of course, the cliché bollocks that "nobody ever paid" to use the bendies won't be "fixed" by this new bus either. You don't pay aboard any of the Bendies: they're on routes which require either a pre-paid ticket or an Oyster card.

If TfL can't be arsed to throw a bit of money at the revenue protection teams, they only have themselves to blame: other countries have used similar pre-pay systems for decades with no ill-effects. And with bendy buses too.

[NCT]

Seats are important in London though - most bus routes primarily serve commuters, and central London journeys are not short either - having a seat for a 40-minute journey isn't much to ask for. Even on routes like the 15 and 38 - most people go for the upper deck for a seat. The Tube gives you speed - buses comfort - it's how London transport has worked for decades and quite well.

[Isaac Newell]

London buses need seats, the distances and the time spent on board are long.

Bendy buses are pretty ropey, I can't stand travelling in them myself, half the seats are on the wheel arch. Hardly anyone taps their Oyster card, if they have one.

Bendy buses are ok in boring identikit European cities with wide avenues and infrequent bus service.

Look at cities around the world with extremely heavy and frequent bus services and the bendy buses don't exist.

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by Isaac Newell

Look at cities around the world with extremely heavy and frequent bus services and the bendy buses don't exist.

Wrong.

But please, do keep digging yourself deeper into that hole.

Believe me, if you think British buses are packed, you clearly haven't experienced the insanity of a Roman bus. People would be sitting on the roof if it weren't for the occasional tram OHLE and telephone wires.

And yes, they are frequent, and yes, they are extremely busy. Often all bloody day.

(Rome is now building two new lines—C and D—at the same time. One is essentially a conversion of the Rome-Fiuggi narrow-gauge tram. The other is brand new. Both are being buried in very, very deep tunnels to avoid the masses of archeology under the city. It's this dearth of existing metro lines which has overloaded the buses. Building and re-opening trams would require closing entire roads for weeks on end to lay the tracks, and this just isn't an option given the mammoth traffic problems plaguing the city. There's just nowhere else for that traffic to go.)

[Isaac Newell]

Rome is a small city, nothing on the scale of London.

[NCT]

The capacity case for artics is overstated in any case - the 140-figure requires crush-loading unseen in Britain and I'd put my finger somewhere closer to 110, which a Tri-axle DD can handle perfectly, with 80 instead of 50 seats. Even with normal 2-axle DDs, the 38 is still overspecified.

[Langur]

^ TFL use a figure of 120 pax for comparisons. They use the figure of 85 for double deckers, and 87 for the new Routemaster. Obviously they can carry more with crush loads. Their manufacturers cite capacities of 90 or more.

[yogh]

Originally Posted by Isaac Newell

I seem to remember there being more routes when the bus wars were on.

As somebody who lived on a new bus route in Manchester during the bus wars, it wasn't exactly some brave new world. The non-transferable tickets meant the route was available to those who paid twice or only used one bus company. Given that at the time there was at least four bus companies, the idea of sticking to one alone wouldn't have got you far. The major achievement of of new routes in this case was splitting revenue from the same area, meaning that had the bus wars continued for a long time, the many separate routes would have become marginal or loss-making, eventually leading to a reduction in service. (If you think that wouldn't happen, I've lived in a small town with enough passengers for a two or three per hour bus service, but which only had a one per hour due to two bus companies running similar routes at the same time.)

Originally Posted by Isaac Newell

...

Bendy buses are ok in boring identikit European cities with wide avenues and infrequent bus service.

Look at cities around the world with extremely heavy and frequent bus services and the bendy buses don't exist.

The 135 in Manchester was a very busy route running bendy-buses. During rush hour the buses would stop taking on passengers before Cheetham Hill in some cases, and I've had to stand all the way from Whitefield at times. They ran at every 7/8 minutes, which is pretty frequent. Indeed, the even busier 192 mostly ran double-deckers, and would have been improved by bendy-buses due to the quicker loading-unloading times and the increased availability of standing room (it's uncommon for many people to stand on the upper floor of double-deckers). Of course, had GMPTE offered cheaper integrated light rail/bus ticketing, the 135 would have been far less busy as it essentially duplicated the northern Metrolink line. The things you can do when local government has better control of transport, ey?

[Isaac Newell]

Originally Posted by yogh

As somebody who lived on a new bus route in Manchester during the bus wars, it wasn't exactly some brave new world. The non-transferable tickets meant the route was available to those who paid twice or only used one bus company. Given that at the time there was at least four bus companies, the idea of sticking to one alone wouldn't have got you far. The major achievement of of new routes in this case was splitting revenue from the same area, meaning that had the bus wars continued for a long time, the many separate routes would have become marginal or loss-making, eventually leading to a reduction in service. (If you think that wouldn't happen, I've lived in a small town with enough passengers for a two or three per hour bus service, but which only had a one per hour due to two bus companies running similar routes at the same time.)



The 135 in Manchester was a very busy route running bendy-buses. During rush hour the buses would stop taking on passengers before Cheetham Hill in some cases, and I've had to stand all the way from Whitefield at times. They ran at every 7/8 minutes, which is pretty frequent. Indeed, the even busier 192 mostly ran double-deckers, and would have been improved by bendy-buses due to the quicker loading-unloading times and the increased availability of standing room (it's uncommon for many people to stand on the upper floor of double-deckers). Of course, had GMPTE offered cheaper integrated light rail/bus ticketing, the 135 would have been far less busy as it essentially duplicated the northern Metrolink line. The things you can do when local government has better control of transport, ey?

There are bus routes in London that duplicate tube lines, and tickets are interchangeable. But they are still full. Why? because they stop nearer to where people live

Bendy buses wouldn't speed loading in Manchester because everyone still has to shown the driver a pass or pay him cash.

[yogh]

Originally Posted by Isaac Newell

There are bus routes in London that duplicate tube lines, and tickets are interchangeable. But they are still full. Why? because they stop nearer to where people live

It's still the case that the extra cost of purchasing a tram add-on forces people to make their entire journey by bus regardless of where they live. I used to live 200m away from Besses o' th' Barn stop and never once caught the tram there. Integrated travel - the kind not possible with a open market in public transport - would have made my journey not only shorter, but less polluting and less damaging to the areas I traveled through.

Bendy buses wouldn't speed loading in Manchester because everyone still has to shown the driver a pass or pay him cash.

It's quicker because unloading happens through the back door while loading happens through the front. Of course, we could have even quicker loading with a swipe/touch card, but that requires...integrated transport. Even cities in the USA manage to get this right; the UK is demented.

[somersetchris]

Originally Posted by yogh

Of course, we could have even quicker loading with a swipe/touch card, but that requires...integrated transport. Even cities in the USA manage to get this right; the UK is demented.

What a great idea. Perhaps we could give this card a name. How about calling it an Oyster?

[Manc Guy]

Originally Posted by somersetchris

What a great idea. Perhaps we could give this card a name. How about calling it an Oyster?

I think your missing the point. Ignorance is bliss!

London is not the UK!

[Isaac Newell]

Originally Posted by yogh

It's quicker because unloading happens through the back door while loading happens through the front. Of course, we could have even quicker loading with a swipe/touch card, but that requires...integrated transport. Even cities in the USA manage to get this right; the UK is demented.

You don't need integrated transport to speed up loading. You could make buses free and you wouldn't need to spend any time swiping, showing or paying.

More realistically, you could have a bus only swipe card.

Whether transport is integrated or not is neither here or there when it comes to loading buses.

If you live in London's zone 4, a bus journey to the centre will cost you £1.20 with an Oyster card whilst the same Journey by tube will cost you £2.70 with an Oyster card.

Would you still use the bus?

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by Isaac Newell

Rome is a small city, nothing on the scale of London.

You stated:

Look at cities around the world with extremely heavy and frequent bus services and the bendy buses don't exist.

You said nothing whatsoever about the geographical size of the city. I proved you wrong. You have therefore decided to move the goalposts in order to "win" your specious argument.

Your new metric—physical size of the city—is idiotic. No single bus route runs the full length or breadth of Greater London.

The Comune di Roma—what we would refer to as "Greater Rome"—is also a lot bigger than most people (including you, it seems) realise: Its area is roughly 500 sq. mi., compared with London's 650 sq. mi. This includes a lot of rural landscape in the Lazio hills, so it's hardly surprising that this skews the population density figures on sites like Wikipedia.

Metropolitan London's housing stock is predominantly low-rise Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian homes. Metropolitan Rome's housing stock is primarily apartment blocks, which means its urban population is much more tightly packed than the stats for the broader Comune di Roma imply.

[yogh]

Originally Posted by Isaac Newell

...

More realistically, you could have a bus only swipe card.

Whether transport is integrated or not is neither here or there when it comes to loading buses.

...

Issued by...? Oh wait, each separate bus company can have it's own swipe card? I suppose if the market could deliver three wonderful solutions it would be better than one. Of course, three separate swipe cards would not affect loading times, because every bus passenger knows which bus is which and has the right card/pass ready for that company.

If you live in London's zone 4, a bus journey to the centre will cost you £1.20 with an Oyster card whilst the same Journey by tube will cost you £2.70 with an Oyster card.

Would you still use the bus?

You're right, the UK shouldn't attempt integrated public transport, as we would find a way to screw it up. As a rare visitor to London, I find the fare structure pretty horrific and confusing. I was recently in Portland, Oregon, and knew within a couple of minutes what ticket I wanted and where/how long it would be valid. The same experience goes for other US cities - not a country known for its wonderful public transport. Yet I've been looking around tfl's website for 15 minutes while writing this reply, and still don't know if I can buy a single day ticket for buses + underground. I think the answer is no...but I'm not sure.

[Isaac Newell]

Rome is a small city, physically and population wise.

[SE9]

As I showed earlier in the thread, its quite clear that Bendy Buses are popular in the areas that actually see them. This is the clearest indicator:

Originally Posted by SE9

Red shows districts in local authorities that voted for Ken Livingstone.
Blue shows districts in local authorities that voted for Boris Johnson.


12: Dulwich - Peckham - Walworth - Elephant & Castle - Oxford St
18: Sudbury - Wembley - Harlesden - Paddington - Euston
25: Ilford - Manor Park - Forest Gate - Bow - Bank - Oxford St
29: Wood Green - Holloway - Camden Town - Trafalgar Sq
38: Clapton - Hackney - Islington - Holborn - Victoria
73: Seven Sisters - Tottenham - Islington - Victoria
149: Edmonton - Tottenham - Dalston - London Bridge
207: Hayes - Southall - Ealing - Acton - White City
436: Lewisham - New Cross - Peckham - Vauxhall - Edgeware Rd
453: Deptford - Old Kent Rd - Elephant & Castle - Oxford Circus
507: Waterloo - Lambeth - Victoria
521: Waterloo - Holborn - London Bridge


Conclusion:
Those in areas most affected by the removal of articulated 'bendy' buses were in favour of a mayoral candidate that pledged to keep them.

Hardly anyone touches their Oyster, because...

If you have a travelcard or bus pass on your Oyster Card, you don't need to tap in at all.

I've never 'tapped in' on a bendy bus... but that's because I always have a travelcard on my Oyster.

An observer watching me, and people like me, would think "there goes another fare dodger".... and then create the 'nobody touches in' argument.

[ill tonkso]

Originally Posted by Manc Guy

I think your missing the point. Ignorance is bliss!

London is not the UK!

Well it is spreading. Portsmouth + Suburbs already have touch in touch out on its trains. Not reached the busses yet though.

[Isaac Newell]

I've also travelled on the buses and light rail in Portland. Provincial US cities have good but very infrequent services, again not on the scale of the UK.

Yes you can buy a single day ticket for buses trains and tubes. It's called a travelcard and is available in zones 1-4 and zones 1-6.

You can also use a pay as you go Oyster card which will be capped at the one day rate if you begin to use it after 09:30.

I'll bang on about this over and over again, but the best bus service I have used is in Buenos Aires. Operates like a regulated taxi, state set fares based on distance, subsidised fuel for the buses and privately operated by companies and co-ops. Buses every 30 seconds on some routes.