On 20 Dec, 12:55, disgoftunwells wrote:

On 19 Dec, 13:20, "Recliner" wrote:

Surprised no-one's posted this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7790082.stm
(complete with pics)

Aston Martin designs Routemaster

The Aston Martin-Foster design has solar panels

Sports car manufacturer Aston Martin is joint winner of a competition to
design a new Routemaster bus for London.

The Warwickshire-based firm's winning entry was a team effort with
leading architects Foster and Partners.

They share the £25,000 first prize with bus, coach and truck design firm
Capoco Design, based in Wiltshire.

(snip)

I couldn't find detail on the engineering:

- Will the bus be air conditioned? (Why aren't they now?)
- What will the drive train be? Hybrid or Plug-in hybrid seem logical.
- What steps are taken to improve safety? (always the biggest
perceived problem with routemasters).


I think the truth is that there isn't any detail on the engineering,
or at least not very much - these are concept designs (and bear in
mind that not one design has been chosen as the 'winner', but two).

Re air-conditioning - the conventional wisdom seems to be that it's
just too impractical to fit A/C to London buses for a variety of
reasons, including the fact that the doors are open so often. Some of
the newer buses do have quite decent forced-air cooling/circulation
systems (or whatever they are called). Also, A/C isn't exactly going
to be compatible with an open, door-less platform.

And yes, the issue of whether there actually would be an open platform
is very a good question.

How this all plays out still seems pretty unclear. The notion of a new
Routemaster is one that has crossed an enormous number of people's
minds over the years, even if just as an inconsequential little day
dream - is Boris therefore really planning to be the 'can do' man that
ignores people who say such things can't be done in this day and age
turns this into a reality, winning accolades from all quarters? I dare
say that is his fantasy - his future political career (and be in no
doubt, he is ambitious) being boosted by his reputation as being the
man that 'saved' London's buses in the public's eye.

I'm not sure how this quite fits with his oft professed drive for
'taxpayer value' though. Are these new buses really going to have
conductors on them, especially when one bears in mind one of the big
arguments for having them is that of speeding up fare collection and
hence reducing dwell times - something Oyster has been rather
successful in doing?

And more to the point how much of the bus network's budget will get
swallowed by this project? The bus service in London has got better by
leaps and bounds over the past ten years - far more reliable, frequent
and faster services providing a far greater capacity with attractively
low fares has led to a great increase in passenger numbers. If this
'new Routemaster' project means there'll be less money around for the
bread-and-butter of the bus network then all the gains made over the
past few years will be in vain. I really hope Boris understands that.