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London Transport (uk.transport.london) Discussion of all forms of transport in London. |
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MIG wrote:
On Dec 19, 5:25 pm, Mizter T wrote: On 19 Dec, 13:20, "Recliner" wrote: Surprised no-one's posted this story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7790082.stm (complete with pics) Aston Martin designs Routemaster The Aston Martin-Foster design has solar panels Sports car manufacturer Aston Martin is joint winner of a competition to design a new Routemaster bus for London. The Warwickshire-based firm's winning entry was a team effort with leading architects Foster and Partners. They share the £25,000 first prize with bus, coach and truck design firm Capoco Design, based in Wiltshire. A Transport for London spokesman said the first of the greener and more accessible, hop-on hop-off, double-deckers could be in service by 2011. (snip) Two things to note. First off, Capoco Design were the firm that were behind the Autocar story on a new Routemaster back in December 2007 - basically Autocar commissioned them to come up with a paper-prototype for a new bus. I started a thread about it back then:http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....owse_frm/threa... An associate editor at Autocar, Hilton Holloway, who was behind this because he wanted "to prove to Bozza that it could – and should – be done" - Boris was of course only the prospective Mayoral candidate at the time. That quote comes from Dave Hill's blog hehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehil...oris-transport Now I suppose one can take two views on the apparent willingness of Boris to formulate a policy that is arguably at least partially influenced (though of course of that we cannot be sure) by a magazine article that was produced with him specifically in mind - it could be considered reckless or it could be considered open-minded. There's another possible angle to all this as well of course - perhaps the Autocar article, which got lots of favourable coverage in the mainstream media at the time (and thus helped to associate Boris with notions of a new Routemaster), was concocted by journalists who were sympathetic to Boris, possibly with the loose collaboration of people within Boris' campaign circle, or at least through the wider public school/ Oxbridge old boy network. Autocar is published by the somewhat old school Haymarket Group, a private company founded by the former Conservative MP and Minister Michael Heseltine who is the group's chairman (his son is the deputy chairman) and still holds a large minority stake in the business. I'm sure I read or heard somewhere that Boris was actually a friend or at least quite good acquaintance of someone senior at Autocar magazine (e.g. Chas Hallett, the overall editor, or this associate editor Hilton Holloway), but I cannot find anything to support that at the moment so perhaps that's not right. Anyway my point is merely that there are a bunch of people here whose views are perhaps broadly in confluence with one another, and who may well move in similar circles, who may have acted in ways that were helpful to Boris, whether with or without his blessing. I'm not entirely sure I rate this as a good way of developing important policy. Do note the TfL spokesman's careful qualifier and lack of any firm commitment in this sentence too... "A Transport for London spokesman said the first [...] double-deckers could be in service by 2011." Great word, could. The whole business looks like confusion between "design" and "style". I would have though that the design requirements for a new London bus would be 1) allow people to get on through a convenient door rather than walk past the driver 2) don't be so long as to block crossings and junctions (eg be double- deck) 3) be reasonably accessible to the disabled 4) (if possible) allow people to get on a convenient locations Instead of which, the criteria for winning seem to have been 1) put the engine in the position that it was put in 100 years ago so that the bus looks old-fashioned for tourists Not very impressive really. Just the thing for bird-brained style queens and politicians then... -- Martin replies to newsgroup only please. |
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