"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 21:37:57 +0100, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:

The 25 has been debendified as of today and doubledeckers are running its
length.

How many routes still have these monsters on them?

12 - converts November
29 / N29 - converts by year end but no firm date
73 - converts September
207 - converts by year end but no firm date
453 - converts November
436 - converts November

All dates refer to 2011 as I believe Boris has decreed they must be
gone by the end of the year. This clears the deck in terms of one
Mayoral commitment before the Borismaster (another commitment) emerges
to much undoubted fanfare early in 2012.

I still think it's a monstrous waste of resources to be binning the
bendy buses when they still have another 10-15 years life in them. I'm
sure I'm in a minority though.
--
Paul C

Not sure if any are being binned, but some of them are being used by
Brighton & Hove buses.

--
DAS

In article ,
D A Stocks wrote:
"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
.. .

I still think it's a monstrous waste of resources to be binning the
bendy buses when they still have another 10-15 years life in them. I'm
sure I'm in a minority though.
--
Paul C

Not sure if any are being binned, but some of them are being used by
Brighton & Hove buses.

If I still lived in a place that used second hand LT buses, I'd be quite
glad of some nearly new kit ! Well done Bozza ;-)

Nick
--
Serendipity: http://www.leverton.org/blosxom (last update 29th March 2010)
"The Internet, a sort of ersatz counterfeit of real life"
-- Janet Street-Porter, BBC2, 19th March 1996

Paul Corfield wrote:

I still think it's a monstrous waste of resources to be binning the
bendy buses when they still have another 10-15 years life in them. I'm
sure I'm in a minority though.

ISTR reading that it's about the most prominent policy from his Mayoralty
that Livingstone has so far *not* pledged to bring back. Presuambly he
regards it as a vote loser as well.

Of course being a vote losing policy will probably mean Lembit's
interested...

In message , at 23:30:51 on
Sat, 25 Jun 2011, Paul Corfield remarked:

I still think it's a monstrous waste of resources to be binning the
bendy buses when they still have another 10-15 years life in them.

The operators will move them to a different city, won't they?
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry writes:

In message , at 23:30:51
on Sat, 25 Jun 2011, Paul Corfield remarked:

I still think it's a monstrous waste of resources to be binning the
bendy buses when they still have another 10-15 years life in them.

The operators will move them to a different city, won't they?
Unfortunatly they have.

I came across one in Leicester, causing chaos as it is too long to turn
right from the right turn lane and was therefore blocking traffic going
straight on. Victoria Park Road to Queens Road.

They are totally unsuitable for British cities. Couldn't they just have
had the back cut of and a new back welded onto the bus part.

Phil

Paul Corfield wrote:

They are totally unsuitable for British cities. Couldn't they just have
had the back cut of and a new back welded onto the bus part.

No they are not - people seem to conveniently forget that bendy buses
have operated for years and years in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Bath,
Gateshead, Leeds, York, Coventry and Birmingham with barely a squeak
of complaint about them. These buses run on a wide variety of
services on streets of varying dimensions and they are not subject to
the sort of irrational and daft vilification that has surrounded their
use in London.

Of all those cities I can only recall using bendies in York - and there they
seemed to run on fairly wide roads, not narrow twisting ones.

Do those cities allow boarding at all doors or just the front? The "free
bus" aspect has been one of the things people hate about them the most and,
whether rightly or wrongly, they believe one of the reasons for
crushcrowding is the limited disincentive for free riding. Also do the buses
generally serve short hops in the urban areas where standing is more
tolerated for a brief period or long suburban journeys where seats are more
desired?

If people wish to complain about long and cumbersome vehicles why is
there not a vocal campaign about huge tri-axle coaches and buses that
are deployed on routes like the Oxford Tube, Megabus and various
sightseeing operations? The answer is that a Mayor (or Mayoral
candidate) has not put them in their sights so far as political
campaigning is concerned even though they are almost as long as less
manouevrable than their bendy counterparts.

There were attacks on the buses before Bojo's campaign. Part of it is down
to London exceptionalism, especially as the bendies coincided with the
phasing out of the Routemaster, but also the buses were never terribly well
sold to portions of the public who have to use them.

Paul Corfield wrote:

They are totally unsuitable for British cities. Couldn't they just have
had the back cut of and a new back welded onto the bus part.

No they are not - people seem to conveniently forget that bendy buses
have operated for years and years in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Bath,
Gateshead, Leeds, York, Coventry and Birmingham with barely a squeak
of complaint about them. These buses run on a wide variety of
services on streets of varying dimensions and they are not subject to
the sort of irrational and daft vilification that has surrounded their
use in London.

Of all those cities I can only recall using bendies in York - and there they
seemed to run on fairly wide roads, not narrow twisting ones.

Do those cities allow boarding at all doors or just the front? The "free
bus" aspect has been one of the things people hate about them the most and,
whether rightly or wrongly, they believe one of the reasons for
crushcrowding is the limited disincentive for free riding. Also do the buses
generally serve short hops in the urban areas where standing is more
tolerated for a brief period or long suburban journeys where seats are more
desired?

If people wish to complain about long and cumbersome vehicles why is
there not a vocal campaign about huge tri-axle coaches and buses that
are deployed on routes like the Oxford Tube, Megabus and various
sightseeing operations? The answer is that a Mayor (or Mayoral
candidate) has not put them in their sights so far as political
campaigning is concerned even though they are almost as long as less
manouevrable than their bendy counterparts.

There were attacks on the buses before Bojo's campaign. Part of it is down
to London exceptionalism, especially as the bendies coincided with the
phasing out of the Routemaster, but also the buses were never terribly well
sold to portions of the public who have to use them.

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:49:49 +0100, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:
Do those cities allow boarding at all doors or just the front?

Just the front.

Maybe the issue is to some extent operational, then. In some places,
e.g.parts of Germany and Switzerland, all buses are like that.

Neil

--
Neil Williams, Milton Keynes, UK

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:49:49 +0100
"Tim Roll-Pickering" wrote:
There were attacks on the buses before Bojo's campaign. Part of it is down
to London exceptionalism, especially as the bendies coincided with the
phasing out of the Routemaster, but also the buses were never terribly well
sold to portions of the public who have to use them.

Why do you need to "sell" a bus? People will know if they like it as soon
as they use it. And frankly anything is better than a routemaster. Once you
wade past all the olde worlde tea and cakes watching a village cricket
match with a spitfire flying overhead nostaligia crap you realise what a
truly and utterly dreadful bus they were. Cramped, slow, noisy, jerky and hot
without a single redeaming feature other than an open platform you could jump
on and off if it was going slow enough. Useful for traffic jams in central
london, a joke for anywhere else.

B2003

d wrote:

There were attacks on the buses before Bojo's campaign. Part of it is down
to London exceptionalism, especially as the bendies coincided with the
phasing out of the Routemaster, but also the buses were never terribly
well
sold to portions of the public who have to use them.

Why do you need to "sell" a bus? People will know if they like it as soon
as they use it.

Yes and in the case of the bendy there was a lot of dislike. But you need to
sell some of the basics - in particular insufficient was done to convince
both customers and fare dodgers that they weren't a "free bus". On the 25 it
was very rare to encounter ticket inspections at least east of Mile End - so
rare that even when fare dodgers were caught they were still overall better
off.