Boris Watch

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 [...]

It’s amazing that some people still think that bendy buses are going to be directly replaced by Routemasters.  They’re not, of course, but, via the Bus Forum, we now have a steer on the amounts and types being ordered for the new operations later this year, which is another piece of data for our files:
38:

5 [...]

Comment left over at Mayorwatch on the 11th March:
Ha!
What bloody cheek. Funny how all these environmental warriors weren’t jumping up and down when the Newt and TFL were ordering thousands of diesel buses – one of the primary causes of the NoX and soot pollution in the centre of London.
Oh, and the 21,000 black cabs [...]

Two more articles – first Pro London cover the matter here, while Andrew Gilligan displays his big worry – that his arch-nemesis Peter Hendy and his evil Ken-worshipping coven will undermine Boris’s wonderful Routemaster with their sordid attempts to run London’s transport professionally for its users:

I know your game, Mr Hendy
Ominous, little-noticed words from the [...]

We occasionally like to go back and revisit old posts, and there’s an opportunity here to put some facts around the bendy replacement timetable, particularly the PVR increase and the stated 2011 date for the Routemaster.  I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that 31/12/2011 counts here, as two years [...]

Bus and Coach is a magazine.  They have a website.  The website has a story about the Routemaster competition.  Here’s a sample:
Perhaps we should be thankful that his nostalgia trip only took him back to the 1950s, and we’re not seeing the re-invention of the eco-friendly low-pollution horse bus.
You can read the rest here.  No, [...]

Not being a journalist, probably not being welcome and definitely have two sets of builders and a day’s work on my plate, I’m not going to be able to follow the competition results too closely, but Dave Hill is coming over all Web 2.0 on us and twittering away.  News so far is that there [...]

The Bus competition has now been bumped back onto the front page of the TfL website, and experts have been hurried into place:
“Alexander Dennis, Britain’s largest bus maker, has deployed 80 development engineers to work on plans for a successor to London’s iconic Routemaster double decker bus.
The news emerged as Transport for London issued a [...]

He’s certainly keeping a close eye on Boris’s actions. Here’s today’s cartoon from the back of G2 (excuse it being a low-quality photo: the Guardian haven’t updated Steve Bell’s page since 4 June, and my scanner’s not working):
 
Boris’s withdrawal of London from Mayors for Peace wasn’t very widely reported as far as I’m aware, so [...]

Tonight’s appearance on BBC London was interesting – perhaps more interesting than I currently have time to do justice to. If any fellow Boris-watchers want to see what they missed, I recommend watching the interview on the BBC web site.
The overwhelming thing that came across to me was that he hasn’t updated his interview technique [...]