Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

On Dec 23, 8:17*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:46:25 +0000, Paul

wrote:
On 23/12/2009 12:30, Tom Barry wrote:
...and it's Wrightbus. *Three doors, two staircases, wtf?

http://www.wrightbus.com/site/default.asp?CATID=9
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/medi...tre/13903.aspx

"Capacity for at least 87 passengers"

Including standing? *Seems a bit low.

Not really - it's a tad higher than the normal capacity spec for low
floor double deckers which IIRC is 80 people. *Therefore this is
notionally 10% greater. *Given the proposed configuration of three doors
and two staircases this suggests most seats will be upstairs with
relative poor lower deck seating capacity but perhaps more room for
buggies / wheelchairs / standees. *I also suspect the chassis length
will be longer than we are used to - possibly 11.3m. I doubt we will get
12m unless we end up with route specific variants as we did to some
extent with the Routemaster (RM and RML versions). *Whether Wrightbus
are brave / daft enough to built a maxi Boris Bus of 13.7m configuration
remains to be seen. The composition of the 5 vehicle "evaluation" batch
will be most interesting as will the routes used to test the vehicle.

The bus is probably going to be a mutant hybrid of a Red Arrow style
lower deck mated with a Berlin Lion City three door / dual staircase
double decker but with the engine and drive line in the most bizarre
location possible (given the need for the rear platform plus door).

I think we should also wildly speculate about which mobile phone or
music player Wrightbus will use to base the "face" and "back" of the bus
on ;-) * *Sorry but most modern deckers look like mobile phones!

I still think this is barking mad but I am genuinely surprised it has
got this far!
--
Paul C

So it should end up much less manouverable than a bendy bus!

Robert

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

On 23 Dec, 23:36, Tom Barry wrote:
MIG wrote:
On 23 Dec, 13:46, Paul wrote:
On 23/12/2009 12:30, Tom Barry wrote:

...and it's Wrightbus. *Three doors, two staircases, wtf?
http://www.wrightbus.com/site/default.asp?CATID=9
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/medi...tre/13903.aspx
"Capacity for at least 87 passengers"

Including standing? *Seems a bit low.
Bendy buses have a capacity of 49 sitting, 149 total.

Capacities for well-designed vehicles are based on things like the
number of seats.

Capacities for badly-designed vehicles are based on dividing the total
volume by the average volume of a person, assuming that all the bodies
can be slotted in upside down or chopped into bits or impaled on
obstructions as necessary.

That's why so many bad designs get approved on the grounds of
"capacity".

It's bollox.

You want a seat for everyone. *I want people to be able to afford to get
to work.

Since these are mutually exclusive in a London context, shall we agree
to differ?

Not necessarily, I just object to false claims of standing capacity,
particularly in vehicles that are spectacularly badly designed for it,
whatever their internal volume.


There is no such things as 'well-designed' - either it's well designed
for the job it's expected to do, or it isn't. *The problem with Boris's
bus is that it's well designed for the twin roles of getting him elected
and burnishing his CV as a Man Who Gets Things Done. *The concept of
'moving people about' appears to have fallen by the wayside at some
point, as has any mention of who pays for this thing.

Something is badly-designed if it isn't fit for the purpose for which
it's designed (many modern trains, eg 376 emus, are designed for
standing, but actually don't allow for much standing because of the
layout, lack of holds etc). I think that both Routemasters and Bendys
are not suitable buses for current-day London.

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, Paul Corfield wrote:

While I am not criticising Wrights (they did, after all, provide the
first hybrids for London years ago) their models have taken a lot longer
to get in to fleet service and Volvo even longer still. Both of the
single deck routes using Wright Electrocities

Are they called that because they're Electrical Atrocities?

tom

--
Big Bang. No god. Fadeout. End. -- Stephen Baxter

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

"Paul Corfield" wrote:

Still they may actually exhume the remains of the Volvo Ailsa and have
the engine [1] at the front :-)

Which buses operated the 24 in the Grey Green era? I seem to recall those
had an unconventionally positioned engine, as the lower deck did not have
enough headroom for my 6'3" frame. The upper deck was great, however - deep
windows and good legroom - and they had a fair turn of speed.

Chris

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

"Paul Corfield" wrote:

"Chris Read" wrote:

Which buses operated the 24 in the Grey Green era? I seem to recall those
had an unconventionally positioned engine, as the lower deck did not have
enough headroom for my 6'3" frame. The upper deck was great, however -
deep
windows and good legroom - and they had a fair turn of speed.

Volvo Citybus with an under floor engine hence it felt like climbing a
mountain when boarding. The seat pitch was extremely odd with some seats
with a mile between them and others pinched tight. They had a decent
turn of speed though.

Yes, I remember the odd seat spacing on the lower deck. The pay-off for the
mountain-climb boarding was, of course, seats right to the back of the bus,
all on one level.

My other memory of these buses was the distinctive smell. Not unpleasant,
but a definite odour. I always assumed it was a particular cleaning
substance used by Grey Green/Cowie/Arriva, or perhaps related to the
interior plastics used, but I suppose it was an engine-related odour
permeating through the floor.

There's an example in the Depot at Acton, IIRC. I hope an early LFDD is also
preserved - are the R-plate DAFs still around with Arriva London?

Chris

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

On 24 Dec, 17:40, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:35:35 -0800 (PST), MIG

wrote:
I think that both Routemasters and Bendys
are not suitable buses for current-day London.

So is there any bus currently in service in London that is suitable?

If not, is there a bus anywhere that would meet your requirements?

Dunno, but we need to be clearer on the requirements than the Boris
project seems to have been. (It seems to have been on the lines of
"anything you like as long as it has a front end that was already
retro in the 1950s".)

Off the top of me head I'd say it would be nice to include

* Don't require excessive road space and block crossings and
junctions.
* Don't require everyone to squeeze through a narrow space to get in.
* Build in some kind of circulation if possible, so that entry and
exit don't block each other.
* Bring back conductors to help people in all sorts of ways and allow
tickets to be sold on the bus all day and night. (The extra revenue
would surely pay for them.)

The bendys have at least got as away from the main curse of OPO buses,
which was filing through a narrow space by the driver while the bus
stood at the stop.

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

MIG wrote:

* Bring back conductors to help people in all sorts of ways and allow
tickets to be sold on the bus all day and night. (The extra revenue
would surely pay for them.)


a) No it wouldn't, have you seriously done any maths on this? £24k a
year + employers NI and other overheads * 8000 buses (or replace with
how many buses you think should be conductor-equipped, but it'll be four
figures). You're talking a lot of extra revenue attracted to pay for
that lot, which then drives further bus purchases* and thus more crew
etc. Basically the biggest single item of the bus operator's bill is
the crew *even with just the driver*.
b) Oyster

The periodic call of 'bring back the conductor' is one of those
nostalgic platitudes that curse us to second rate public transport in
the UK. Seriously, if you find yourself on the same side of the
argument as Quentin Letts it's a sign you've gone off the path of sanity
big time.

And now back to the oven.

Tom

* Note that Boris is reducing the bus network fairly substantially up to
2018, when you take into account the extra mileage worked by bendy
replacements and the former projected rise in mileage turning into a
reduction.

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

On 25 Dec, 15:04, Tom Barry wrote:
MIG wrote:
* Bring back conductors to help people in all sorts of ways and allow
tickets to be sold on the bus all day and night. *(The extra revenue
would surely pay for them.)

a) No it wouldn't, have you seriously done any maths on this? *£24k a
year + employers NI and other overheads * 8000 buses (or replace with
how many buses you think should be conductor-equipped, but it'll be four
figures). *You're talking a lot of extra revenue attracted to pay for
that lot, which then drives further bus purchases* and thus more crew
etc. *Basically the biggest single item of the bus operator's bill is
the crew *even with just the driver*.
b) Oyster

The periodic call of 'bring back the conductor' is one of those
nostalgic platitudes that curse us to second rate public transport in
the UK. *Seriously, if you find yourself on the same side of the
argument as Quentin Letts it's a sign you've gone off the path of sanity
big time.

I said it would be a nice thing to include, as would many things if
transport was run as a public service. I don't claim to have done
calculations on anything (such as the value to the city and country of
transport being run as a public service) but that doesn't mean that
they have no value.

It's not nostalgia. They don't have to do exactly the same job as in
the past, but I see that there is a value to having public transport
better staffed, and I would be arguing the same for railway stations
etc.

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

On Dec 24, 11:44*pm, MIG wrote:
The bendys have at least got as away from the main curse of OPO buses,
which was filing through a narrow space by the driver while the bus
stood at the stop.

The main curse was the time taken for a queue of people to pay and
wait for change, which Oyster and round-money flat-fares have done
away with in London - even on OPO double-deckers...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

Boris Magic Wonder Bus builder announced
 

On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:44:56 -0800 (PST), MIG
wrote:

* Bring back conductors to help people in all sorts of ways and allow
tickets to be sold on the bus all day and night. (The extra revenue
would surely pay for them.)

What extra revenue? Practically everyone is using Oyster.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.