Mizter T wrote:


(I think it was Tom Barry - well it must have been - who attempted to
work out the total road space that would be used by the double-deckers
that replaced the bendies on route 38 - IIRC his calculation was that
they would actually occupy *more* road space.)


Using the then-current DD lengths it was less on the 38 but a lot more
on the 507/521 with their 12m single deckers, so the net change of the
first debendifications was zero (well, 9m). Generally replacement with
normal DDs reduces the length, though.

Ahem:
38 bendy - 18*47 = 846m
38 DD - 10.4*72 = 748.8m
38 BM - 11.2*72 = 806.4m

So you save a bit of space, just under four bus lengths. Subsequent
conversions are at lower replacement rates, which increases the
reduction at the expense of capacity.

Obviously amount of road taken up isn't the be all and end all - the 521
bunches badly whenever I've seen it post-conversion; my personal record
is four in a row. In any case anyone in the industry will tell you it's
not buses that hold up traffic but junctions.

Tom