Now that Boris is back, we really can expect up to 600 Wrightbus NBfLs. I wonder how many will have rear platforms.
All double decks once came with open rear platforms. It was the norm. They were designed as “back loaders” to distinguish them from the voguish half-cab innovation that latterly moved the service door from the rear to immediately behind the front axle & engine. Progressively, rear loaders acquired platform doors. These were under the control of a conductor who would usually have to slide open or shut the early two-leaf examples. Later, four leaf powered doors appeared at the rear. Few can now remember the discomfort associated with a totally open platform in cold weather and this was a good reason for the fitment of platform doors.
But there was a better reason.
It was common to find a “wait until the bus stops” sign on the open platform. This warned passengers that jumping off a moving bus was hazardous. It didn’t really stop them. Hopping on or off away from stops was a fact of urban life, as the rear platform was not constantly supervised. Though in touch with the platform through his upper deck mirror, the conductor couldn’t always be “on the back” (unless he never took fares).
This evocative picture, from the Wilts & Dorset Facebook pages, is of an open platform back loading Bristol LD Lodekka, taken in 1975. More businesslike than beautiful, at least the LD was slightly raked when compared with its upright FL/FLF/FS Lodekka successors. The usual Hants & Dorset visor over the cab windscreen adds a little local individuality. H&D operated both FS and FL back loaders (with rear platform doors) and its very last crew operated bus of all was a FL
The Leyland Atlantean brought with it the possibility of a driver rather than a conductor controlled service door. Here was a design with a platform ahead of the front axle. Even though platform staff conducted early Atlanteans—they had to be were crewed—operators felt that the driver rather than conductor controlling the front door was a Good Thing.
Progress was not reliant on the conductor’s observation and there could no longer be the prospect of passengers jumping off willy-nilly. But even when the service door was under the full control of the driver, the warning sign migrated forwards with the door. It was still possible, though now rare, for the driver to take off with the doors open. Few people could now hop on and off and, safety wise, that really was a Good Thing.
Even before our current heavy health & safety culture, the early industry recognised that it was not particularly conducive to good health to leap from a moving vehicle. Hence the warning signs and, increasingly from the late 1950s, those rear platform doors. At the time of the publication of the 1974 Health & Safety Act, there were still some back loaders left in service, some without rear platform doors. But even in the era of driver-only buses, still the warning signage remained. There was still a concern.
So why, then, is London falling back in love with the open platform? Convenient in queues it may be but the wider industry had recognised the problems associated with it almost ever since the first motor bus and long before our current beneficial/detrimental* (*delete as appropriate) obsession with health & safety.In London, people are going to have to relearn how to jump off a moving bus again. If you must, you’ll need to try to match your speed with the bus’. Though certainly not risk free, this involves a little trot when you reach the pavement but remember to do so in the direction of travel. Leaving a moving bus in the reverse direction is somewhat counter to the laws of physics and you could pay the price with a fall.
NBfL picture c/o the Derby Bus Depot
27 comments:
Although I have had the opportunity to look over an NB4L I haven't yet managed to experience one in service. However, one thing about the rear platform immediately struck me was that the doors prevent being able to get off the bus properly whilst it is in motion. There seems to be insufficient space at the rear of the platform to undertake the exit manoeuvre.
Daddy, I thought the rear platform would be continuously open when on daytime service and locked off at other times.
If "the doors prevent being able to get off the bus properly whilst it is in motion. There seems to be insufficient space at the rear of the platform to undertake the exit manoeuvre"...
... what's the point of a rear platform?
From what I hear people completely ignore the rear platform and staircase and get on at the front and off in the middle. Meanwhile the second driver, who is there solely to prevent people getting on or off the platform between stops is getting extremely bored.
The only reason this nonsense is with us is due to one man's nostalgia trip. A strong argument against all powerful elected mayors if ever there was one.
The doors at the rear are open during the day. I have used the bus a couple of times when it was still new on the streets. Some people did get on at the rear on the way to Victoria. Many alighted at the back at Victoria itself. However I didn't see any "intermediate" jumping on or off. People may now be more willing to try now the bus has been running for a few weeks.
I would agree with Mr Gadgets that there is something about the way the rear platform is designed that it doesn't allow quite the same dexterity that a RM did. There isn't the same rear facing opening and convenient grab handle.
Sorry for the shameless plug but here a couple of my photos. One showing a RML with someone boarding between stops
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24759744@N02/3448821554/in/set-72157610696621397
and one of the NB4L's rear platform. I think you can see the difference in design.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24759744@N02/6522341097/in/set-72157628446631023
"Bristol LD Lodekka... More businesslike than beautiful"
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Busing!
Seriously though, it will be interesting to see how the NBfL pans out. How many will actually be built, and how many will be in rear platform layout. The original Routemaster had "specialist" variations for differing work, so to build a two door NBfL shouldn't be seen as a failure of the design, unless they become the norm.
I still fail to see that London is really that different operationally to the rest of the UK that the buses the rest of us use aren't suitable. But my routes (sic) are much more Tilling than 55 Broadway.
But hang on, Bristol now has voted to have it's own Mayor - a bus built especially for Bristol? Hmmm, that could be the start of something....oh, we're pretty much back to the start of this comment!
600?! That's an awful lot of money for something that will be useless in 15 years. Or are they planning to ship them all of to Malta once they're too old - I hear they like useless london buses!
600 is what is said in Boris's maifesto!
All buses are useless in 15 years.
HOPE the voters know what these buses are costing!!
There wouldn't be any need for a rear platform with between-stop boarding and alighting if the infrastructure was properly designed.
It's stupid to have buses stopping twice, once at a stop, then again a few metres up the road at traffic lights.
While I understand London's network is too complex to take the "absolute priority to buses at traffic lights", a bit of a redesign at busy locations would seriously reduce the need for such things. If, for example, there'll be a delay near a set of lights, put it *at* the set of lights.
Yet another thing Germany and the Netherlands tend to get right, and the UK tends to get spectacularly wrong.
"If, for example, there'll be a delay near a set of lights, put it *at* the set of lights."
Do you mean put bus stops right before traffic lights?
If so, that's stupid.
1) If the lights go green, then traffic behind won't be able to get past/will have its flow getting past restricted. That may be fine for the bus at the stop, but it's still going to exacerbate traffic queues all around London which will just delay all the buses anyway.
2) What if the bus finishes loading and the lights go red? Still the same situation, just even more annoying as you only just missed the lights.
This would just cost loads and have no benefits whatsoever.
"Do you mean put bus stops right before traffic lights?
If so, that's stupid."
No, it's not. Go to Germany or the Netherlands and see it in action.
"1) If the lights go green, then traffic behind won't be able to get past/will have its flow getting past restricted. That may be fine for the bus at the stop, but it's still going to exacerbate traffic queues all around London which will just delay all the buses anyway."
Think about layout. If you put a bus pull-in leading onto the lights, and a hatched yellow box alongside it, the bus can get out while the lights are on red if it wishes. Other traffic can get past. There's plenty of space for this on Oxford Street, for example (though admittedly not always in London).
"2) What if the bus finishes loading and the lights go red? Still the same situation, just even more annoying as you only just missed the lights."
The next stage is fitting lights with transponders for the bus to request a green phase when it wants one, I guess.
Another thing that would help in London would be countdowns on traffic lights as are becoming more common elsewhere.
Neil
How is this going to affect people in the rest of the country. Until now, we have had to rely on ex-London cast-offs to replace aged buses. Since these will be unsuitable for operations outside London, how might this affect both the manufacturers and the length of service for buses outside the capital?
"Think about layout. If you put a bus pull-in leading onto the lights, and a hatched yellow box alongside it, the bus can get out while the lights are on red if it wishes. Other traffic can get past. There's plenty of space for this on Oxford Street, for example (though admittedly not always in London)."
There maybe room in Oxford Street, but Oxford Street is limited to buses so it would be rather silly.
As you admit to, there's little space in London to be putting bus stop laybys in anywhere. Traffic lights, are, by definition, at congested junctions with limited space. There's simply not room in most of London to be whacking bus laybys in - especially as they'd all need to be two or three buses long in length.
Yellow hatchings are just taking up valuable room, and the DfT rules don't even allow yellow hatchings apart from on box junctions, for good reason. You'd have to use Keep Clear markings, which would be totally ignored.
And of course, nobody's ever going to let the bus pull out from the layby, so when the lights are green, the bus will be stuck in the layby with other traffic going past it. If it's got a transponder to keep the lights green, then traffic will just continue to drive past it (with bus still stuck in lay by) until the lights finally give up and go back to red. Or will bus drivers just adapt and pull in in front of cars more so than they do already?
"The next stage is fitting lights with transponders for the bus to request a green phase when it wants one, I guess."
London traffic lights are simply too complicated for this to work. If two routes are at the lights, and one's late and one's early, what does it do then? How far away is a bus going to be from the lights to keep it green? How many cars are going to be let through while the lights stay green? Are these cars all going to pile through, get stuck further up and block the junction? How many cars are going to build up on other approaches as their lights stay red, causing queues in other directions?
How will it work when there's buses approaching junctions from all directions, which, in London, there will inevitably always be? Which approaches let buses through first? Will one direction of a bus route always get through a junction quicker than buses the other way? What effect will this have?
How many buses will be delayed by queues trailing back from other junctions where buses in a different direction are holding other lights on red?
How many passengers will be knocking on the front doors of buses that have just pulled away from a stop but get stuck at a red light just a few feet away? How many drivers will let them on? How many won't? How many people will get annoyed and how many people will fall over? How many bus drivers will jump red lights as they manage to pull out of a bus stop as the lights change?
"Another thing that would help in London would be countdowns on traffic lights as are becoming more common elsewhere."
So everyone races for the lights and the number of crashes increases? We're too impatient in this country for that to work.
Message continues...
What will happen if a bus needs to turn right at a junction, when the bus stop is right next to a set of traffic lights and in the inside lane? It would be impossible.
Would there have to be two bus stops, one at the lights for buses going straight on, one further down the road for buses that need to stop and then pull across to get into the correct lane?
What will happen about interchange between buses where stops have to be separated like this? What if two routes go to the same place, but at this particular junction, one goes straight on and the other turns right? As a passenger, will you have to stand in between two stops and run to the correct one when you see which bus turns up first? Or do you commit to one stop, and then get irked as the other route turns up first and serves the other stop and you miss it?
There's too much traffic and too many buses in London for your idealised view to work.
It may have localised benefits for a bus at the stop at the traffic lights, but it would just screw up all the other London traffic which would just delay buses moreso than they already are.
I recall bus stops in Toronto all being just before traffic lights. This was partly for traffic priority but also meant that there was a consistency in stop placing and ease of interchange between buses.
Many of these ideas do work in other parts of the world, but would require a change of mindset here to introduce them.
Modern priority systems don't use transponders, they use GPS - often now integral within the ticket machine. By comparing scheduled location with actual location, priority can be given to the bus that needs it most. I-Bus ought to be able to do this - if not, it's another one to chalk up to TfL mismanagement.
Mind you, as London does not have to adhere to a published timetable - unlike the rest of the UK - that appalling habit of buses suddenly turning short (from the point of view of the passenger) can make a mockery of signal priority in the first place.
As for the location of stops - surely it is more logical for passenger benefit to be on the exit side of junctions, so that all buses going the same way stop in the same place?
It is not as simple as placing bus stops on the approach to lights. Most systems would require around 80m warning of the approaching bus to allow time for the lights to change and a safety factor before starting the red+amber phase.
Giving green time and then not using it will remove capacity from the junction; as others have said, this can affect other bus routes.
Standard advice is to place bus stops on the exit from junctions, away from queues.
Still can't see the point in having an open platform nowadays.
The cost of employing a second person to get bored looking after it just makes it even more ridiculous.
You can certainly tell that TfL is heavily subsidised!
TFL may be heavily subsidised, but then London taxpayers heavily subsidise the rest of the country (ducks for cover)
Even with Borisbuses covering the busiest central London routes, there will be plenty of normal double deckers and E200s for the rest of the countyr to get at a bargain rate!
Don't blame TfL. It has to enact the policies of the Mayor.
Anonymous 16:19 said...
"How is this going to affect people in the rest of the country. Until now, we have had to rely on ex-London cast-offs to replace aged buses. Since these will be unsuitable for operations outside London, how might this affect both the manufacturers and the length of service for buses outside the capital?"
I don't see a problem. The major operators know how many buses they have to buy each year to fit with their desired age profiles. If their London work dictates fewer new buses in the Capital (assuming that NBFLs will live out their full lives there), then more new buses will be put into provincial fleets. Where routes outside the capital require newer buses but don't justify brand new ones, they'll have buses cascaded from somewhere else just as Stagecoach did (using Manchester as the source) after the London operations were sold or as NBC became quite prolific at doing. A lot of cascades from London were exacerbated a few years back as TfL was throwing money around demanding new buses here there and everywhere in order to get to having a wholly low-floor fleet so much earlier than they needed to. The result was fewer new buses for the provinces and a greater number of cascades instead.
The provinces don't always want, or can use, cast-offs from London.
TfL-spec double deckers will not usually have enough seats for many council school contracts.
"What will happen if a bus needs to turn right at a junction, when the bus stop is right next to a set of traffic lights and in the inside lane? It would be impossible."
No, it wouldn't.
In that case, as again is done all over the place in the Netherlands and Germany, you have the bus stop leading into a bus lane with dedicated signalling. When the bus driver presses the button to indicate he wants to depart, his lights go green and he cuts across the stoppped traffic.
Have you ever been to Germany or the Netherlands and seen how much more efficiently it works when junctions and stop layouts are designed to favour buses?
Your entire response suggests you have not.
Neil
Here is a prediction:
The production NB4L buses will not have an open platform at the rear. Here are the reasons:
1. Few passengers used them.
2. The cost of the second man was excessive.
3. Elf'n will have their say!
This will enable Boris to climb down from his "platform" (pun intended!) and say that he tried, but now the people of London have had their say.
This will happen in around 6 months from now (so by the end of 2012).
Anyone disagree?
The following informative web page covers bus priority systems. There is an example of Swiss practise where the bus stop is at the traffic lights in the ahead-only lane, when the bus wishes to depart it requests priority enabling it to make a left turn at the junction (right turn in UK) in front of the stopped traffic.
http://citytransport.info/Buses02.htm
Standard US practise is for bus stops to be at street corners at the entry point to junctions, thus facilitating transfer to other routes.
There's an intersting example in Bristol on Bond Street at the approach to Stokes Croft roundabout. The bus lane has a row of bus stops leading to the roundabout entry point. A narrow divider kerb separates the bus lane from traffic. Lights control traffic entering the roundabout but buses bypass the lights and waite at a give way line. When the lights turn red buses enter the roundabout!
Regarding NBFL's supposedly innovative hop-on-hop-off capability when stuck in traffic. I remember reading an Andrew Braddock article in Buses where he tried to 'sell' this feature to some European transport operators. They were baffled as to why the bus would be stuck in traffic in the first place!
If you give buses proper priorities, have cashless boarding, and exit doors, you could manage with standard OPO city buses. You would also need less of them because they would run faster - big operational savings over NB4L all round.
"In that case, as again is done all over the place in the Netherlands and Germany, you have the bus stop leading into a bus lane with dedicated signalling. When the bus driver presses the button to indicate he wants to depart, his lights go green and he cuts across the stopped traffic."
You admitted there's not enough room in much of London to fit bus laybys in at traffic lights. How on earth are we going to fit dedicated bus lanes with dedicated signalling (with the necessary traffic islands) in?
With the high number of buses, what happens when a bus behind wants to go but the one in front doesn't?
The biggest issue is the huge waste of traffic junction capacity. London simply cannot afford to have a large proportion of junction timing dedicated to having buses pull out on their own dedicated green lights. It's an enormous waste of road traffic capacity. Green must be green for all traffic, otherwise you've got loads and loads and loads of vehicles sitting there pointlessly, which will only worsen traffic congestion as traffic will be at red lights for longer. Increased traffic congestion will just affect buses further back and in adjacent areas.
"Have you ever been to Germany or the Netherlands and seen how much more efficiently it works when junctions and stop layouts are designed to favour buses?"
Of course not, I suspect that I am in the majority in that I've never had the opportunity to go around Germany and the Netherlands looking at bus traffic junction priority. Do German and Dutch cities have the same make up as London, then?
Post a Comment