>>,,and there are bound to be objections from the manufacturers of the bendybuses.>>
On what basis?
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KL always went on about the bendybus as though he'd discovered the secret of life. They were in use in some European countries before they came here.
But they didn't have the routemaster. A bus that actually represents London in the eyes of tourists, which people can hop on and off and which has a conductor to keep an eye on things.
The bendybuses are just a free ride for many users. They get on and off at the back without an Oyster card and there's rarely an Inspector to check.
It's a fact of life that pushchairs and the disabled can't go everywhere and about time we were all a bit more realistic. What happens with the trolley cars in San Francisco? If some buses are pushchair friendly, surely that's good enough?
I went to school on routemasters and would love to see them pottering about the capital's streets again.
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Bendy buses were ghastly. I was on one that wrapped itself around a traffic light going round Parliament Square. My cycling career in London lasted 10 minutes - once overtaken by one of those things; never again.
It will cost half a billion, though, to deal with the problem. I fear it may never happen - though there won't be new bendy buses.
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Aren't most buses' bodies custom made by companies like Optare, VanTTool and based on a chassis supplied by Volvo/Scania/Dennis etc..?
If so, surely they can make a handsome modern/retro rendition of the routemaster a bit like the new MINI or FIAT 500? but it could squat to let on passengers and be a low floor design.
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When the bus fares in Sheffield were subsidised and very cheap , they ran a bendy bus service in the central area. Fascinating to see the floor moving but a bit disorientating after a while. As far as I recall , they could not charge fares on the bendy bus as it did not meet some regulations.
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"P.s. I'm a former bus spotter from the early 1970's"
With any luck, it should show up soon.
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"With any luck, it should show up soon."
There will probably turn out to be three of them.
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Sheffield... bendy bus service in the central area. Fascinating to see the floor moving but a bit disorientating after a while.
GWS, do you mean you never stood on the rotating, flexing bit and pretended you were surfing? (Okay, well I was in childhood/ earlty teens at the time.)
The Nottingham trams do it too but the up and down movement is not so pronounced.
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They have recently reinstated a Routemaster bus in Nottingham, complete with conductor, on the route from the city centre to Arnold. I saw it yesterday for the first time, wondered what was going on, and my g.f. explained it to me..
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/731633...m
Edited by Rich 9-3 on 06/05/2008 at 14:41
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Hello Rich-9-3 I live near this route in Woodthorpe, I have seen these red buses a few times, but always empty, I also wonder how they would stand up to Chavs etc....
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There was no excuse whatsoever for articulated buses in London. They were pure 100% gimmick, intended to show us there was a new, original transport supremo in town.
The things are very cumbersome in traffic, so much so that they are restricted to a few routes, where they still get in the way and threaten people at certain points. What on earth is the point of a vehicle sixty feet long if you can get the same number of passengers into one half the length? That's right: it doesn't have a rational point at all.
As for the disabled access, it is poppycock. It's just as hard to get into one of these as a routemaster or one of these modern long-overhang double deckers. And of course if there are more than one or two disabled people in a bus, that is a rare occasion. There's no need to cater for seventy or eighty of them. We're a bit fitter than that so far.
Most of all though, the articulated bus was a way for someone or other - let us not dance on the carphound's grave for all love - to express their total contempt for London, home of the double decker. 'Bendy buses', an expression that makes me puke, were hisexonner's way of insulting us as Londoners. Strange really, in view of his claims to love us and our monstrous wen, but apparently true.
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'Only some ghastly dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster.'
K. Livingstone, c. 2001 A.D.
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I also wonder how they would stand up to Chavs etc....>>
Routemasters stood up to mods and rockers. When I was a kid you'd often sit in a seat which had been slashed with a knife and carefully repaired.
I was thinking about bendybuses again. They're perfect for what they're often seen doing: shifting large numbers of standing passengers at airports from plane to terminal.
As a way of taking people through central London, they don't work.
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Absolutely spot on Optimist. I was wondering only the other night what could be done with the things, and that was the answer that occurred to me.
Long live low-tech airports though!
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They'd make excellent chicken sheds.
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But would they make good hippy wagons before they get used for poultry? Too complicated for the un-washed, I think. Bedford Duple remains the hippy wagon of choice.
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In that youtube clip of an icy tunnel under the river in Moscow, there's a moment when an articulated bus hurtles past wagging its tail, indeed slapping the wall with it, before the heroic driver collects it up and goes tiptoeing on his way....
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In that youtube clip of an icy tunnel under the river in Moscow there's a moment >> >> when an articulated bus hurtles past wagging its tail indeed slapping the wall with it before the heroic driver collects it up and goes tiptoeing on his way....
>>
you wouldn't have wanted to be in the back of that thing would you
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Not unless you were sober, pretty strong and with a clear idea of what was happening, no.
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The Routemaster is a design classic, with some advanced features for its day, and served London well, but times move on. The first production RM's entered service in 1958 and the first prototype had been trundling around since 1954!.
London Transport tried to switch partly to long (36ft) high-capacity single-deckers in the late 1960's, with the AEC Merlins - those had a short carreer.
To me, it seems that articulated buses are a tool for a particular job, like working on high density routes along wide roads without bottlenecks or tight corners. So they would have a place in London and other British cities if matched to the right operating conditions.
Modern low-floor double-deckerscould fill the role of the Routemaster - they could be operated with conductors if it was felt necessary but by just a driver otherwise.
The final development of the Routemaster, in late 1960's, was the FRM, a rear-engined, front-entrance double decker using 60% components from the standard Routemaster parts bin. Only one prototype was completed, and it survives. I rode on it once and remember it was very noisy. The FRM project was abandoned when it was realised how it would be much cheaper to buy off-the-shelf products like the Leyland Atlantean or the Daimler Fleetline.
Edited by Sofa Spud on 06/05/2008 at 21:56
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Link to pic of the unique FRM 1 rear-engined Routemaster prototype.
www.londonbuspage.com/JPGs/040724-5.jpg
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Didn't I hear that BoJo wants hybrid engined buses ?
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complete with conductor >>
.....who, presumably, will be armed :-(
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