Recliner wrote:
What with all the Tube strike discussions, I didn't see any discussion
of this press release from a week ago:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/medi...tre/11940.aspx



I read it at the time, but haven't bothered to cover it yet for some
reason, sheer laziness mainly. Did anyone else notice that the 507 and
521 haven't lost the bendy buses yet? Contract was up at the end of
May, but there's been a delay for some reason.

Anyway, Borisbuses. They're rather coy in not saying that probably
three of the applicants are *foreign*, assuming the three main UK
suppliers are involved, although there could be some wildcards in there.

Also that there's now consideration given to covering up the rear
platform at night. Where I come from that's called a 'door', Boris (the
real reason is probably to save staff costs at times when the bus is
lightly loaded - someone's probably drawn up a cost estimate for running
the bus with two crew on 24 hour routes, and it has rather too many
noughts at the end). So, a collapsible door - if memory serves doors
are amongst the usual troublesome components on new transport vehicles
these days, and I'm not sure making them collapsible will necessarily help.

Finally, there's no suggestion of the bus having to be a hybrid or
electrically powered vehicle, opening the way to a pure diesel or gas
vehicle, provided it's less polluting than some notional 'conventional
bus', of what Euro emissions standard isn't stated.

Tom