On Sep 16, 8:44*pm, Neil Williams
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:56:49 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T
wrote:
I've seen it somewhat more than that, though I also see it happening
with conventional buses as well as lorries and other traffic.

Builders' lorries are in my experience the real scourge of London
traffic. *Badly-driven, noisy, smelly and just plain large. *Even
though it might contribute to congestion, a larger number of smaller
vehicles would be preferable in that context.

Hard to fit 6.3 metre scaffolding pole on a smaller vehicle though. Re
the driving - well, scaffolders have something of a general
rapscallion reputation.

(Yes, I know there's all multitude of other builder's lorries on the
road hauling all sorts of supplies, but I'm being completely partial
and picking on the poor scaffys - they can take it though!)

On Sep 16, 8:37*pm, Neil Williams
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:05:26 -0700 (PDT), MIG
wrote:
Basically, there seems to be an assumption that bendyness and not
having to go past the driver are exactly the same thing.

I've never understood this.

One of the common anti-bendy complaints is that it allows people the
possibility of a free ride because they don't have to present their
ticket to the driver.


True; in many German cities you can board at any door during the day.
But with Oyster going past the driver doesn't seem to slow things down
- indeed, with a well-laid-out bus, the one-way flow works very well
indeed.

Hmm - Oyster makes things much quicker than in the days of old, no
doubt, but it's still nothing as quick as to how a three door bendy
can swallow passengers up.


What *is* bad is the provincial single-doored bus. *As ever with the
bus industry, paranoia about a small amount of lost revenue overtakes
the benefits to the timetable, PVR and passenger comfort/convenience.
At times the industry really is far too conservative for its own good.

I'm still always a little taken aback about this when using busy buses
in big British cities.

On Sep 16, 10:59*pm, Neil Williams
wrote:.

The issue is that the UK doesn't invest in its city rail
infrastructure enough[1]. [...]

[1] Of course, London has other issues, and providing capacity on the
ageing Tube is hard. *But were it a German city, I'm convinced it
would have had several more Thameslinks, Crossrails and possibly even
some trams by now. *And a lot of Citaros to feed them - but probably
very few actually in Central London. *(Central Hamburg is only
penetrated by a handful of bus routes, a good chunk of which are
premium-fare Schnellbusse).

If London were a German city, it wouldn't be anything like as big or
predominant as it is, as things would be more spread out across the
country in other cities. Which is another way of saying London would
never be a German city, for it and the country it sits in and is the
centre took a rather different path of development to that of Germany.

On 2010\09\16 20:40, Neil Williams wrote:

In central London, most people stand on the Tube. I don't see why a
bus should be any different

Buses are prone to slamming on the brakes due to pedestrians and
cyclists etc.

On 17 Sep, 01:41, Mizter T wrote:
On Sep 16, 8:37*pm, Neil Williams
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:05:26 -0700 (PDT), MIG
wrote:
Basically, there seems to be an assumption that bendyness and not
having to go past the driver are exactly the same thing.

I've never understood this.

One of the common anti-bendy complaints is that it allows people the
possibility of a free ride because they don't have to present their
ticket to the driver.

Anti-bendy or anti-straight, it makes no sense as an argument either
way with regard to the shape of the bus.

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:13:04 +0100
Paul Corfield wrote:
There is already far more than a couple of million quids worth of bendy
buses lying around. There is more than that in Ash Grove garage after
the 38 converted. I don't know where the London General buses went but
only a few have ended up in service elsewhere so they must be in store.

Can someone explain whether the type of bus to be used can actually be
dictated by the mayor given that the routes are run by private companies?

Is there clause in their contracts with TfL saying that you will use the
types of buses we tell you to, or is it more a case of dark hints of contracts
not being renewed if you don't do as we tell you?

If its the latter couldn't all the companies have just given boris 2 fingers
and carried on running the bendies, daring him to sack the the lot of them and
find new ones with enough experience to run all the routes in a city as large
as London?

B2003

On Sep 17, 7:26*am, MIG wrote:

Anti-bendy or anti-straight, it makes no sense as an argument either
way with regard to the shape of the bus.

Indeed - particularly as other British cities have bendies, on which
boarding is strictly at the front with revenue protection by the
driver.

Neil

On Sep 17, 9:47*am, wrote:

Can someone explain whether the type of bus to be used can actually be
dictated by the mayor given that the routes are run by private companies?

Yes, as they are all operated under contract to TfL.

Is there clause in their contracts with TfL saying that you will use the
types of buses we tell you to, or is it more a case of dark hints of contracts
not being renewed if you don't do as we tell you?

There will indeed be something specified in the contract. This is
usual for all contracted routes, inside and outside London.
Obviously, the more specific you are, the more expensive things will
be, so it tends to be that provincial evening service contracts will
just specify something like "a bus with at least 30 seats" rather than
specifying manufacturer or model. But there *are* tenders that do
specify that. *Something* has to be specified, otherwise somebody
could win a tender on price (if that was the strict criterion) by
specifying the use of 12-seat Transit minibuses where that would be
completely insufficient.

If its the latter couldn't all the companies have just given boris 2 fingers
and carried on running the bendies, daring him to sack the the lot of them and
find new ones with enough experience to run all the routes in a city as large
as London?

No, or not really. If they were that bothered, they could have all
said they wouldn't bid, leaving Boris in a bit of a quandary. But
realistically they won't all do that (Stagecoach's withdrawal aside),
and there's no reason why they would care so long as they are paid
enough to cover the cost of acquiring/leasing the specified buses,
operating them and taking a decent profit margin, as businesses tend
not to be all that interested in points of principle as long as they
are making money.

Neil

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 11:30:16AM +0000, d wrote:

Wouldn't surprise me. I never understood why Boris seemed to think that
anyone outside a few militant foaming at the mouth cyclists was actually
bothered about bendy buses in the first place.

That's because you've not been paying attention whenever I (and others)
have pointed out that bendy buses block junctions, holding up other
buses, and a few other problems too.

--
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

You can't spell AWESOME without ME!

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 07:56:49AM -0700, Mizter T wrote:
On Sep 16, 3:23=A0pm, wrote:
We're all pedestrians and I can count on 1 hand the number of times I saw=
a
bendy bus blocking a crossing in all the years I worked in central london=
I've seen it somewhat more than that, though I also see it happening
with conventional buses as well as lorries and other traffic.

With "other traffic" - cars, vans and the like - walking around the
obstruction is trivial. With normal buses it's still not too bad - with
a 9m bus, you will have, at most, 4.5m to go to get around the
obstruction, and on average 2 and a bit metres. With a bendy bus (or
an HGV) you can roughly double that, so you have far less time to get
around the obstruction, make sure there's no other traffic moving on
the other side, and then cross the road. Given that the pedestrian
phase on most traffic lights is quite short anyway, this is a serious
problem, especially for those with mobility or vision impairments.
And it's made even worse at those places which have stupid railings
alongside pavements. I'm glad to see those disappearing.

There's little that can be done about HGVs unless central government
gives local councils permission to levy *huge* fines on lorries that are
parked illegally while making their deliveries (which would in turn
encourage operators to run them into city centres outside peak traffic
times) but introducing a bus of similar size when there are perfectly
good alternative designs already on the roads was madness.

--
David Cantrell | Godless Liberal Elitist

Perl: the only language that makes Welsh look acceptable