"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...
Breaking news!

David Brown is in TV right now, looking quite worn-out. He says that the
disruption is down to the state of roads around depots - TfL have kept the
red routes clear of snow, but depots are connected by minor roads under
the care of local authorities, and those have been blocked by snow. He
didn't seem to be blaming the councils for this, though.

Boris was saying much the same on Radio 4 at 1 pm. In reality, it's not
just access to and from the depots that is the problem. It's the fact that
most of the route mileage (I should think) is on borough roads. Also, since
TfL set their target of a bus route within 400 m of every home, there are
more routes along minor roads than ever before.

The party line from TfL has an implied criticism of borough road gritting
operations, though they stopped short of explicitly criticising them. It
only needs one borough along a particular route to underperform and the
whole route is knackered. For example, Chiswick High Road (L.B. Hounslow)
was gritted yesterday, the early morning traffic pushed the snow on to the
salt, and bingo, we had a clear(ish) road for the buses from Stamford Brook
Garage to enter. But I heard that King Street (LB Hammersmith & Fulham) was
an ice rink.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)