A few more things from the Routermater trainwreck to add to the pile:
- There’s now a requirement to cover up the gap at the back. This is known to the sane majority of transport observers as a ‘door’. Nearly 100% of buses have them already, I understand.
- Apparently the conductor is now not a conductor, as there are no tickets to sell, but is basically going to be employed to stop people falling out of the door.
I was looking at one of our new Enviro400s the other day and it’s a remarkably attractive, modern, curvy design, evidently built very much with London in mind, since it’s currently the best seller to London operators. Nice, wide door too. Isn’t that a ‘New Bus For London’ right there, then?
However, on my first trip on the new bus, the smart interior was slightly spoiled by this:
which would appear to be an empty can of Tyskie Polish Lager. Bus booze ban still going well then.
Oh, and the pointless 507 debendification is apparently scheduled for the 25th July, but whether it’ll be in dribs and drabs (there’s a lot of slowness in bus deliveries, and I haven’t seen any indication of new Mercedes 12m Citaros being delivered yet) or one magic swoop is as yet unclear. 521 is now down as the 29th August.
Finally, KPMG are apparently [PDF] the people running the ‘independent’ bus service review, after their success in spotting a £100m gap in the LDA accounts somehow missed by Boris’s Forensic Audit Panel while they were trying to dig up dirt on Lee Jasper. This is reporting into car naked streets loving TfL supremo Daniel Moylan and coupled with the Routemaster update above means Boris’s promise of ‘conductors not consultants’ can safely be consigned to the memory hole, too. KPMG are doing very nicely out of Boris, actually – classic bit of disaster capitalism, making money advising business how to get through the recession. Nice work if you can get it.
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“Classic bit of disaster capitalism, making money advising business how to get through the recession. Nice work if you can get it.”
Privatise, deregulate, cut taxes on the rich and corporations.
That’s £10,000.00 please!
[...] can safely be consigned to the memory hole, too. … Here is the original: Routemaster bUpdate/b Share and [...]
Narry sir – the Enviro 400 is already a “New Bus for Manchester” – 340 of the type in use with Stagecoach in the southern half of the city, working out at around 47% of the fleet. I’m afraid the capital can’t claim this one for its own – not that that’s a valid excuse for Nu Routemaster of course!
Likewise on the 50 in Birmingham, but with one door. My point is that there’s a distinct ‘TfL Spec’ version which is specific to London needs – given that the ‘New Bus For London’ is likely to be a hacked about version of an existing bus because the majors all have big capital costs sunk in existing designs, I’m suggesting just recognising reality, which is that TfL’s size and clout is sufficient to make bus manufacturers tailor their generic designs to London needs anyway, and what’s wrong with that? We put more money into the bus network, after all.
I can’t wait until the specification “Manufacturers have been asked to consider options to allow for the rear platform to be closed off at certain times, such as at night” slowly changes into “Manufacturers have been asked to consider options to allow for the rear platform to be closed off at certain times, such as when the vehicle is moving”
No offence intended (because I totally agree about this whole ‘Routemaster’ thing being bulls**t) but I really really don’t think the Enviro 400 represents a significant advance in bus design, let alone something akin to the Routemaster with regards to longevity and standards of design.
There are some things about the interior of the Enviro 400 that, to me, scream of a designing firm who’s members have never travelled on a bus (similar problems will almost certainly plague whatever half-baked ‘bus for London’ Boris cooks up). The ridiculously cramped seat just behind the driver with no window to look out of is horrible – I appreciate the extra capacity but its hardly intelligent design. Likewise, the two other seats at the front feel stuck on. The air conditioning upstairs at the back is deafening to the point of giving me headaches, and the seats are not particularly comfortable. Also suffers from the plasticy/cheap feel of interior design that is the unfortunate status quo on buses these days (personally I much prefer the Wrightbus Gemini, I think its the classiest/most comfortable bus on the roads at the moment…)
My point is that I genuinely think London DOES need a new bus – but whatever it is Boris is promising, that won’t be it.