Other 21st Century Routemaster-related posts
Competition for a New Bus
Routemaster RMXL
More on RMXL
Buses on the Agenda
When it comes down to it, the battle for London’s mayoralty may have been fought over the shape and size of a London bus! Articulated or conventional. Double or single. Conductors or drivers. Gross or net cost. Icon or ordinary. You’d think there were more important issues.
Except that there probably aren’t. A single (or double!) red bus can embody the green, social and transport problems in a city post congestion charge where traffic levels are said to be as high as they were before the original £5 daily congestion levy.
Boris Johnson now has four years to deliver on his promise of a 21st century Routemaster. It’s widely held that he won’t be able to. Safety, cost, unenthusiastic manufacturers, unenthusiastic TfL officials, and pure practicality may all get in the way. Johnson may then have a problem on his hands.
He may need to look for other solutions. Conductors on bendies may be one of them. An articulated double deck bus fleet another. Both don’t get around the allegedly cyclist unfriendly nature of artics. A tri-axle Hong Kong-style decker may be a little more ‘British’. This ignores the longer wheelbase of the front half of an existing artic.
We like RC169’s suggestion posted as a comment on this blog. He suggests that if ftr in York can manage with an isolated driver, why not a front entrance, flat floor, double deck along the same lines? Bristol achieved it before in what we called the most technically advanced double deck of its time. One flaw. ftr now sees ‘conductors’ on board, too.
Sunday
Boris on Board
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6 comments:
Placing conductors on articulated buses is certainly achievable, and may even pay for itself through reduced evasion. However, this idea of an articulated double-deck twin-staircase open-platform trollybus, as iconic as it would be, might have to wait a few years.
I think conductors on artics would be a could idea, and it couldn't coast as much as getting rid of them all after a short time anyway.
Or these "new Routemaster" things.
I think you will find a new routemaster is just a normal double decker if you think about it.
Glad you liked my suggestion about a reworked Bristol FLF!
As far as the 'conductors' on the ftr are concerned, I presume that First would withdraw them if the ticket machines could be made to work reliably?
I recall a manager of an undertaking that was planning to introduce a no-change, farebox system in the mid 80's saying that it was not possible to get a machine that could issue tickets and give change installed in a bus. Not long afterwards, I was therefore quite pleased to find just such a machine installed in a bus in Cologne. In the ensuing 20+ years, such machines have become commonplace in buses (at least in Germany and some other mainland European countries), and appear to work with a satisfactory level of reliability. I rather doubt that the 'operating environment' for such ticket machines is very different in the UK, so I should imagine the problems are solvable.
If not, well a Lodekka with a conductor (sorry, 'customer service host') works fine as well. There's just one flaw from my perspective, though - in my brief spell as a CSH, I always preferred to work on the FL or FS variety. But hopefully the redesign could make more space on the platform of an FLF as well!
Most passengers pay off bus. They either have an Oyster or in central London they can pay at a TFL machine at the stop. It's therefore feasible to operate a bus very much like FTR in York but without the conductor/host. Would that be politically acceptable, though?
What's the difference between FTR (either single or double deck) and a normal bendy, though? Both will (and have been) vilified by the press and public alike.
A double deck FTR will IMHO be guilty of the same sins as a Merc Artic.
As for the Routemaster, I think it was extremely over-rated. I think we should let go of sentimentality and move on. The Routemaster was good at the time, but times have moved on and there's nothing wrong with TFL running 2-door deckers.
I want to buy Routemasters - Import it to Singapore.
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