Richard J. wrote:
I see that David Brown, MD of Surface Transport at TfL, is all
enthusiastic about the new 2-person-operated bus: "now we hand the baton
to the bus manufacturers to turn those fantastic ideas into a brand new
bus for the Capital's fleet."

That wasn't his view in December 2007, when he wrote a letter to The
Times as follows:

"Reintroducing open platform buses would require conductors on all
routes, as they would be required to safely manage access. This would
cost £600 million – raising this money would require a huge fare rise
for London’s six million daily bus passengers. The single fare would
have to rise from 90p to at least £1.50 and the weekly pass from £13 to
at least £21.

Open platform buses mean more passenger deaths. The passenger fatality
rate on Routemasters is more than double that of other London buses."

Of course, we had a different Mayor then ...


They aren't that mutually contradictory - it clearly would cost a
staggering amount of cash to introduce new 2 crew buses on all routes,
which would mean fare rises, which is presumably why Boris and co. are
trying to find a way round it, like not having conductors on them all
the time or not having that many 2 crew buses (500-800 out of 8000+ has
been mentioned, which isn't really bringing back the Routemaster but
still obviously costs a stack of cash at a time when plenty of Tories
think that the large annual bus subsidy could use a haircut or a healthy
dose of privatisation).

On the second point Brown is quite right to say that the baton has been
passed to the bus manufacturers, because there was an OJEU notice back
in about February and presumably six companies have come forward between
then and now. The notice didn't, from memory, give much away other than
to say 'we had this competition, who wants to design a bus using bits
from it?'

Obviously, being a non-partisan employee of a very partisan
organisation, Brown's going to have to trim his comments to fit the mood
of the man at the top or lose his job, but there's sufficient between
the lines to suggest that TfL are playing off both sides somewhat.
What's noteworthy is that the bus companies are firmly not going to be
turning the sketches that were put into the papers into a bus, they're
quite possibly going to be adding sufficient twiddly bits to satisfy TfL
while trying desperately to reuse as much existing technology, economic
conditions hardly being conducive to massive investment in wholly new
programmes. Apart from anything else, 2 out of the 3 UK manufacturers*
already have very recently launched designs they'd presumably wish to
get their money back from rather than build a competitor). I won't even
go down the delicious route of what might happen if a foreign builder
had the best tender and Tory-run TfL had to have their very expensive
bus built in Stuttgart or Poznan during an election campaign where
British jobs are going to feature big.

Brown is also famous for a sterling demolition of the bendy myths in
front of the LA Transport Committee.

Tom

* The third being ADL, who are currently cleaning up in the market with
their existing product - just getting some new ones on our local route,
in fact.