On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 06:45:44PM +0000, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Wed, 7 Jan 2009, David Cantrell wrote:
The quicker boarding claim was demolished by the ASA in 2005:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4531057.stm
Firstly, please have the good grace not to trim posts so hard that i have
to wade through google groups to find out what was actually written.

That's what threading is for. If your chosen news client doesn't
support it very well, I suggest using something else.

A bendy has a shorter dwell time if 10 more more passengers are boarding,
and longer if it's less than that. But that's compared to a routemaster,
not a blunderbus. The reason a bendy can take longer is because of the
kneeling suspension - the bus takes time to lower and raise itself at
stops, so that there's level boarding.

I wish they took longer to lower and raise themselves! The sudden
vertical jerks can be quite un-nerving! Especially the ones that happen
nowhere near bus stops.

However, if they have an engine at the front and a rear-wheel drive, as
we've been promised

I wonder why they'd want rear wheel drive. I don't see why FWD would be
any kind of disadvantage.

then they'll have an axle, and won't be low-floor (no
matter what the concept sketches say), which means they probably will have
to kneel, in which case the advantage evaporates.

Not necessarily. The engine could be an electrical generator, driving
electric motors on the wheels. It works on trains, and I believe there
are some concept road vehicles doing similar.

--
David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity
-- Hanlon's Razor

Stupidity maintained long enough is a form of malice
-- Richard Bos's corollary