London Banter - Boris puts new bus through its paces

"Ian F." wrote:
http://www.london.gov.uk/media/press...ough-its-paces

Personally?! Someone please tell me when it's safe to come out onto the
streets again...

In the bit about the environmental benefits there are these nice platitudes
/ weasel words...

---quote---
If every bus in London performed to the standard of the New Bus for London
then air quality could be improved to the extent of a 57 per cent reduction
in the amount of NOx emissions from buses. [...]

The version of the new bus that is being tested is only intended to operate
on the busy roads of central London. But the potential of its environmental
technology is that if rolled out across the entire fleet of London buses it
could potentially reduce CO2 emissions in the capital by 230,000 tonnes a
year.
---/quote---

Two rather big *ifs* there - the second in particular. I'm all for less
polluting vehicles, but this press release seems to be getting rather (if
not radically) ahead of itself.

I see the buses - of which I think there are still only going to be five of
initially (something the press release notably avoids mentioning) - are
going to be operated by Arriva London. I wonder what route they'll end up on
(and whether they'll actually work the whole route or will only do the
central London section).

Also, in the footnotes of the press release there's this...

---quote---
Stills and moving footage of the bus are available for download from the
following FTP site ftp://ftp.wright-bus.com/TFL Username - ftptfl1
Password - NBfL2011. Note that the site will be available for one week only.
---/quote---