On 17/04/2020 15:25, MissRiaElaine wrote:
On 17/04/2020 13:44, Recliner wrote:

"Free travel and middle door-only boarding will be temporarily introduced
from Monday to protect drivers and keep passengers safe from the
coronavirus, the operator said in a statement."

This is all very well, but London is one of the few places in the UK
where buses have middle doors, they certainly don't up here. I'm not
sure how many places other than London do, ISTR York does, but it's been
a while since I was last there.

London was sensible in keeping them - after a wobble in the 90s. Much
of the country, especially in the larger urban areas, had dual-door
buses decades ago as you will remember, and IMO changing that was a
mistake. Some forward-thinkers are bringing them back (Brighton,
Bristol, Oxford in the past, and now Dublin, where the bad idea also
spread), but I didn't expect *this* to be an argument in their favour.

London's move to board by the middle door comes about a month after it
was done in several other European bus networks, I wonder how much
illness and worse could have been avoided if TfL had made this decision
earlier (or if more passengers had listened to sense and stayed at
home). It's still no use for the routes that need the smallest buses, I
don't think any London operator has the shortest Enviro200 for instance
(8.9 m) with a second door. A standard bus may not fit round the
corners of these routes. I can only think of the X26 that has standard
size buses with only one door, there may be a few others.

Richard.