London Banter - View Single Post - Arn't all new buses in London supposed to be hybrids?

[email protected] · February 21st 17, 11:36 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Tuesday, 21 February 2017 19:07:06 UTC, Clank wrote:
On 21.02.2017 8:05 PM, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Thursday, 9 February 2017 09:25:55 UTC, wrote:
Or did I get the wrong end of the stick? Some brand new 66 plate
single deckers have appeared on the W9 and they're plain old diesel.

Err new DD buses in *Central London* have to be hybrids. Single decks
have to zero emission in Zone 1. Some other routes further out have
gained them but there's no consistent approach. The new buses on the W9
are to euro6 standard so are low emission. The Mayor's policy re the
ULEZ means there will be more hybrid double deckers bought new with a
massive programme of retrofitting existing fleet vehicles to bring them
to either euro6 or euro6 equivalent. There are simply far too many
buses with at least 7-10 years service life left for them all to be
booted out of the fleet and replaced with new vehicles. There are also
two other huge issues - there needs to be an enormous increase in
electricity generation if London is to have a lot of electric buses
with overnight charging. There is also a development gap in the bus
market - there are very few viable hybrid single deck buses and even
fewer all electric or hydrogen buses. China seems to have a monopoly
on producing electric single deckers (see those on the 507/521) and I
don't think that's very healthy. There are some Optare electric buses
but their reliability seems dubious. Single deck hybrids have broadly
failed in London - several fleets have had short service lives and then
been scrapped prematurely. This poses a big problem for TfL hence the
current reliance on buying euro6 spec diesel single decks. It will be
interesting to see if the bus manufacturers can produce reliable and
affordable hybrid / electric single decks in the range of sizes that
London's network needs.

It remains a mystery to me why London spends a fortune on hybrid and
battery powered buses (complete with the inefficiency of adding a load
of weight in the form of decidedly environmentally unfriendly batteries
to every bus) to address a problem that in a sane nation would be solved
with trolleybuses.

Well yes but I suspect the prejudices of the Cities of London,
Westminster and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are as strong
now as they were back in the 30s. Can't wires fixed to our lovely
buildings - heaven forfend!

It was in the 1900s not the 1930s. They have a choice, wires or choke to
death. Simple

--
Colin Rosenstiel