On Sep 16, 11:10*am, Roy Badami wrote:

On 16/09/10 11:02, Mizter T wrote:

It remains hard to see how this expensive project might proceed given
the lack of money and coming cuts, though now Boris had made up his
mind to try and stick around for another term I guess he might feel
the need to commit to it more firmly. If existing bus services get cut
to pay for this, well...

I would expect that a lot of the money for the design and prototyping
will be contractually committed at this stage, so outright cancellation
would be expensive, and probably politically unpalatable as a result.

Agreed - though it begs the question of at which juncture Boris might
choose to back off from the scheme somewhat - after the October CSR
perhaps (where the 'blame' can be attached to the diminishing grant,
and justification given that 'London needs to do its bit too' or some
such.


More likely, if savings are to be made, would be for the initial order
of production buses to be scaled down and/or put back by a year or two.

Yes, seems quite possible. If he gets re-elected though I can't quite
see it being shelved indefinitely.


I wouldn't be surprised if we'll see a much more gradual phasing out of
the bendybuses than Boris might have envisioned.

Not too sure about that - the provisional dates for 'de-bendification'
are out there [1], and if it was done it would be something concrete
that Bozza could point at during the re-election campaign to show that
he had 'achieved' something of his manifesto commitments. I think de-
bendification is daft so I'd be quite happy if it was delayed, as any
potential new Mayor would probably not be quite so hung up on bendy
buses, but it might well be a fait accompli by then.

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[1] Boriswatch debendification update:
http://www.boriswatch.co.uk/2010/09/...-down-5-to-go/