Paul Corfield wrote:


Dream on - the whole issue is now so tightly boxed in that City Hall
have nowhere to go on this policy other than implementation at all
costs. The fact the deadline has been accelerated to end 2011 is, in my
view, an attempt to be able to say in May 2012 that at least one policy
objective has been delivered in full.

It also neatly avoids having to have any of the routes implemented with
a huge fleet of hybrids, which would obviously incur even more of a
bendy premium than the 21% extra cost on the 38.

A lot rests on the 38 - the 521 appeared to be working quite well last
week* (although I formed the distinct impression that they hold it
together during the 8-9am peak at the expense of reliability in the
shoulder - an 11 minute wait at 9am, for instance), but of course
they're effectively using the same buses, only shorter and with fewer
seats. The 38 is a totally untried combination of lots of buses with
slow boarding, so you can't take it as read that it'll work the same way.

Tom

* One thing that I hadn't factored in until I tried using the 521 is
that if the queue's too long people find alternative routes, so to get
the right impression you need to know what effect it has on routes that
parallel the main route. People won't queue forever to get on a 38, but
will redistribute. Another interesting observation was that people
don't board them to full capacity, presumably because the nearer the
bust gets to full the more likely it is for the person at the front of
the queue to trade a squashed space near the door for a guaranteed seat
on the next one in a couple of minutes.