(Warning, this is long - but I think it addresses a number of
important points from both the "pro-bendy" and "anti-bendy" camps.)

On 04 Sep 2004 11:19:58 GMT, (Mait001) wrote:

Yes, your "large" buses might be fit for modern cities with grid-patterm
streets and wide multi-lane highways, but this is so patently untrue of London
that I am amazed it needs explaining to you.

Milton Keynes?

No - most of our bus services wind their way around local estates, and
do not run on the grid roads - and 90% are minibuses. Bizarrely, it's
actually a place where a short-wheelbase double-decker would be quite
useful because of the tight turns in the estate roads - but it'd have
to be driver-only because the economics wouldn't add up for crew
operation.

It's nobody fault if you happen to be too large for ordinary bus seats.

People have grown over the last 40-50 years, both upwards as well as
outwards. I do not fit in seats in a Routemaster except the
side-facing ones or the ones right at the front or upstairs at the
back. That's no good.

That the Routemaster in its current form has had its day I have no
doubt. What it should be replaced with is quite another issue. The
recent generation of low-floor double-deckers has perfectly acceptable
legroom. If it wasn't for the sue-everyone culture, there could quite
easily be an open-platform version of such a bus developed.

If 99.9% of people manage to fit in ordinary bus seats, you can hardly accuse
them of being designed by midgets, unless that 99.9% also happen to be midgets
without realising it.

"99.9% of people" do not fit comfortably in Routemaster seats, IMX.
Look next time you travel on one. I'd consider the figure nearer 75%.
I would also dispute that the spacing of them is the same as "ordinary
bus seats" - most deckers I've ridden around the country, even those
from the 1970s and 1980s, have substantially more legroom than a
Routemaster. I think there's a good reason for that.

The vast majority of people are not over 6' 3" tall.

The figure is increasing year-on-year. I think they call it
"evolution".

This is just a prejudiced rant. I happen to be very short and find stairs very
difficult to manage. That's just my bad luck. Why should the entire bus fleet
be designed on the assumption that either all of its passengers are very short
or very tall?

I know I'm going to get criticised for this, but here we go again...

"Why should the entire bus fleet be designed to carry a wheelchair,
when probably less than 5% of passengers use one?"

Why not? Low-floor buses, like wheelchair ramps, don't just benefit
those in wheelchairs. And, in a civilised society, we don't exclude
minorities just because they are less mobile (or whatever) due to, in
the great majority of cases, something which was not at all their
fault.

Is it not the same issue (on a very high level)?

Whether bendies are suitable for what they're being used for is a
totally different question, and one that has more to do with the
difference in bus operational style between the UK (which
traditionally favours deckers) and mainland Europe (which has used
bendies for many years).

This (apart from restricted bridge height) tends to come down to the
fact that the British style of bus operation favours joining a bus in
the suburbs which then goes on to travel a relatively long journey
(either in terms of distance, time or both) into the city centre,
where many routes meet.

The European city style, by contrast, concentrates bus operation on
taking people to the nearest railhead, which results in most journeys
being very short (~15 minutes at most) and so standing not being an
issue. In Hamburg, for example, the number of regular city bus routes
that penetrate the city centre is probably around 10.

Now, bendies are perfectly suited to this kind of operation. It
could, of course, be argued that, to complete the "transformation",
London's bus and rail services need to be reorganised to fit. The
trouble with that, of course, is that the Tube is overcrowded and
underfunded, and the National Rail services around the city are
nothing short of a sick joke compared with a modern heavy-rail S-Bahn
that would be found in Germany.

Have TfL made a mistake, then? Perhaps. IMO, bendy operation is well
suited to the core section of the 73, which is mainly shoppers
travelling to/from Oxford Street to/from either Victoria or
Euston/Kings Cross or other tube stations. It sounds to me like the
outer reaches of the 73 are somewhat different, and consist of
longer-distance travellers coming into the City to work etc.

This would suggest to me that the real solution is twofold. Separate
the through routes from the very busy "intra-city" ones, and run them
via quieter parallel streets (e.g. take the 73 off Oxford Street).
Create a new route running from Vic to Kings X via Euston and Oxford
St using bendies at a high frequency. This kind of thing may well
need applying elsewhere on converted routes as well.

The other option, of course, is to go back to low-floor
longer-wheelbase deckers, with the top deck for the long-distance
passengers who want seats, and the bottom for short-distance standees.
This approach seems to have proven itself over time.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To e-mail use neil at the above domain