Acrosticus wrote:

Finally, a couple of interesting asides. I remember pretty clearly the demise
of the RT (because I'm an old fart), but I don't remember that being as much of
a cause celebre as the death throes of the RM seem to have become today.

Well, to the general public an RT looks not very different from an RM,
and I guess in 1979 it didn't look as out-of-date as an RM looks in 2004
anyway. So it was probably seen as the demise of just another batch of
old buses by most people, even those interested in buses.

The coming demise of the RM, however, means the demise of an entire class
of buses - rear entry, conductor-operated double deckers - which has dis-
appeared about two decades ago from most other places and survived almost
only in London. (For example, the last Berlin D2U was taken out of service
in 1978.)

Also, the demise of trolleybuses, which
the RM was originally designed to replace, is just within the span of my memory
(because in fact I'm a very old fart!) and my dim recollections of that are
that they were here today and gone tomorrow without any farewell parties or
other razamatazz.

Again, to the general public a trolleybus is just another sort of bus.
I've heard, however, that the demise of the trams did cause some farewell
parties.

.... Martin, who rode an RT in regular service this spring ...

In article , (Martin Bienwald) wrote:

Well, to the general public an RT looks not very different from an RM,
and I guess in 1979 it didn't look as out-of-date as an RM looks in 2004
anyway. So it was probably seen as the demise of just another batch of
old buses by most people, even those interested in buses.

They did look different in that they were 7'6" instead of 8'0" (apart from the
RTWs). Another unique feature was that they were allowed to run with just
a single rear light for quite a few years after all other traffic (not bikes of
course) had to have two. ISTR this was because they were pretty obvious
with all their interior lights on.

Incidentally, that's the one thing that so many "period" films and television
programmes fall down on - they have the right vehicles, but with twin rear
lights when they would have had only one.


--
Peter Beale

From: Martin Bienwald
Date: 04/09/2004 15:00 GMT

Again, to the general public a trolleybus is just another sort of bus.
I've heard, however, that the demise of the trams did cause some farewell
parties.

... Martin, who rode an RT in regular service this spring ...

The demise of London's trams was before my time (therefore putting me only in
the "very old fart" league rather than the "extremely old fart" one!) so I
wasn't there, but I've seen the photos of the partying as they were withdrawn,
as well as "The Elephant Never Forgets" (the commemorative film made by the
British Transport Film Unit as their farewell to London). The National Tramway
Museum at Crich even staged a re-run of the London tramway closing ceremony
back in 2002 (the 50th anniversary), so they certainly went out in style.

.... Acrosticus, who last rode in an RT in regular service in the spring too ...
(except that was back in 1972!).

Helen Deborah Vecht wrote to uk.transport.london on Sat, 4 Sep 2004:

I am too large for quite a few bus seats. At a whopping 5'5½"(166cm)
tall, I find my long??!! legs mean my knees are crammed against the seat
in front, even on some modern buses. My hips are too wide for some of
the seats too but I'm not overweight.

Surely that should read *especially* on some modern buses? And trains,
too, for that matter. I am overweight, but not as badly as some people,
and I find modern train seats so tiny that a journey of more than ten
minutes or so is a penance!

I personally find Routemasters, VEPs, and especially CIGs far, far more
comfortable than their modern equivalents!
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/

Martin Bienwald wrote:
Acrosticus wrote:
Finally, a couple of interesting asides. I remember pretty clearly the demise
of the RT (because I'm an old fart), but I don't remember that being as much of
a cause celebre as the death throes of the RM seem to have become today.

Well, to the general public an RT looks not very different from an RM,
and I guess in 1979 it didn't look as out-of-date as an RM looks in 2004
anyway. So it was probably seen as the demise of just another batch of
old buses by most people, even those interested in buses.

Personally I much prefer RTs to RMs on aesthetic grounds - sight and
sound. The RT already looked old-fashioned when I first encountered
one in about 1962. My eyes are not young enough to say how
old-fashioned the RM looks now.

The coming demise of the RM, however, means the demise of an entire class
of buses - rear entry, conductor-operated double deckers - which has dis-
appeared about two decades ago from most other places and survived almost
only in London.

Losing three things I value: conductors, hop-on/hop off, and the
downstairs front seat, with a view forward no modern bus can offer.

What really annoys me is that I don't believe the economic case for
replacement
of RMs has been made. Apart from the cost of new buses vs refurbished,
conductors prevent lots of expensive vandalism, bigger buses will be
delayed
more in traffic, and all new buses consume far more fuel than RMs.
Some RMs and RMLs are undoubtedly falling apart, but not all.

All new buses are around 6" wider than RMLs, excluding mirrors. Bendy
buses weigh twice as much as RMLs; low-floor double-deckers weigh
about 50% more than RMLs.

They really ought to keep at least one RM route as long as it's legal
to do so, but it must be a proper route useful to ordinary Londoners,
not a tourist special, or it won't survive.

... Martin, who rode an RT in regular service this spring ...

Where? Blue Triangle's RT was great yesterday on the 10, proving RTs
are still not too slow to run in modern traffic.

From: Colin McKenzie
Date: 04/09/2004 21:29 GMT

Losing three things I value: conductors, hop-on/hop off, and the
downstairs front seat, with a view forward no modern bus can offer.

But you're gaining spontaneous combustion, which is something only one
Routemaster ever offered AFAIK!

In article , Martin Bienwald wrote:
Well, to the general public an RT looks not very different from an
RM, and I guess in 1979 it didn't look as out-of-date as an RM
looks in 2004 anyway. So it was probably seen as the demise of
just another batch of old buses by most people, even those
interested in buses.

IMO the upright radiator grille and headlamp on stalk of the RT made
it look old fashioned long before 1979. The last car to have these
was the Ford Popular which ceased production in 1959 and was a
hangover even then.


--
Tony Bryer

Mait001 wrote:
This is an incredibly sad "improvement", and I would like to record both my
dismay at the wanton vandalism that is being visited on London's bus routes by
T.F.L (or whatever quango-based morons now control these matters)


Not that TFL is a Quango.

Anyway it's not a sad day, good riddance to the too warm, too cold tiny
midget buses

"Tony Bryer" wrote in message
...

IMO the upright radiator grille and headlamp on stalk of the RT made
it look old fashioned long before 1979. The last car to have these
was the Ford Popular which ceased production in 1959 and was a
hangover even then.

Well, both of those were designed and introduced at about the same time,
1939 for the RT and essentially 1946 for the Ford Anglia which became the
Popular. It was derived from the Ford 8 of 1938-9.
--
Terry Harper, Web Co-ordinator, The Omnibus Society
75th Anniversary 2004, see http://www.omnibussoc.org/75th.htm
E-mail:
URL: http://www.terry.harper.btinternet.co.uk/

(Warning, this is long - but I think it addresses a number of
important points from both the "pro-bendy" and "anti-bendy" camps.)

On 04 Sep 2004 11:19:58 GMT, (Mait001) wrote:

Yes, your "large" buses might be fit for modern cities with grid-patterm
streets and wide multi-lane highways, but this is so patently untrue of London
that I am amazed it needs explaining to you.

Milton Keynes?

No - most of our bus services wind their way around local estates, and
do not run on the grid roads - and 90% are minibuses. Bizarrely, it's
actually a place where a short-wheelbase double-decker would be quite
useful because of the tight turns in the estate roads - but it'd have
to be driver-only because the economics wouldn't add up for crew
operation.

It's nobody fault if you happen to be too large for ordinary bus seats.

People have grown over the last 40-50 years, both upwards as well as
outwards. I do not fit in seats in a Routemaster except the
side-facing ones or the ones right at the front or upstairs at the
back. That's no good.

That the Routemaster in its current form has had its day I have no
doubt. What it should be replaced with is quite another issue. The
recent generation of low-floor double-deckers has perfectly acceptable
legroom. If it wasn't for the sue-everyone culture, there could quite
easily be an open-platform version of such a bus developed.

If 99.9% of people manage to fit in ordinary bus seats, you can hardly accuse
them of being designed by midgets, unless that 99.9% also happen to be midgets
without realising it.

"99.9% of people" do not fit comfortably in Routemaster seats, IMX.
Look next time you travel on one. I'd consider the figure nearer 75%.
I would also dispute that the spacing of them is the same as "ordinary
bus seats" - most deckers I've ridden around the country, even those
from the 1970s and 1980s, have substantially more legroom than a
Routemaster. I think there's a good reason for that.

The vast majority of people are not over 6' 3" tall.

The figure is increasing year-on-year. I think they call it
"evolution".

This is just a prejudiced rant. I happen to be very short and find stairs very
difficult to manage. That's just my bad luck. Why should the entire bus fleet
be designed on the assumption that either all of its passengers are very short
or very tall?

I know I'm going to get criticised for this, but here we go again...

"Why should the entire bus fleet be designed to carry a wheelchair,
when probably less than 5% of passengers use one?"

Why not? Low-floor buses, like wheelchair ramps, don't just benefit
those in wheelchairs. And, in a civilised society, we don't exclude
minorities just because they are less mobile (or whatever) due to, in
the great majority of cases, something which was not at all their
fault.

Is it not the same issue (on a very high level)?

Whether bendies are suitable for what they're being used for is a
totally different question, and one that has more to do with the
difference in bus operational style between the UK (which
traditionally favours deckers) and mainland Europe (which has used
bendies for many years).

This (apart from restricted bridge height) tends to come down to the
fact that the British style of bus operation favours joining a bus in
the suburbs which then goes on to travel a relatively long journey
(either in terms of distance, time or both) into the city centre,
where many routes meet.

The European city style, by contrast, concentrates bus operation on
taking people to the nearest railhead, which results in most journeys
being very short (~15 minutes at most) and so standing not being an
issue. In Hamburg, for example, the number of regular city bus routes
that penetrate the city centre is probably around 10.

Now, bendies are perfectly suited to this kind of operation. It
could, of course, be argued that, to complete the "transformation",
London's bus and rail services need to be reorganised to fit. The
trouble with that, of course, is that the Tube is overcrowded and
underfunded, and the National Rail services around the city are
nothing short of a sick joke compared with a modern heavy-rail S-Bahn
that would be found in Germany.

Have TfL made a mistake, then? Perhaps. IMO, bendy operation is well
suited to the core section of the 73, which is mainly shoppers
travelling to/from Oxford Street to/from either Victoria or
Euston/Kings Cross or other tube stations. It sounds to me like the
outer reaches of the 73 are somewhat different, and consist of
longer-distance travellers coming into the City to work etc.

This would suggest to me that the real solution is twofold. Separate
the through routes from the very busy "intra-city" ones, and run them
via quieter parallel streets (e.g. take the 73 off Oxford Street).
Create a new route running from Vic to Kings X via Euston and Oxford
St using bendies at a high frequency. This kind of thing may well
need applying elsewhere on converted routes as well.

The other option, of course, is to go back to low-floor
longer-wheelbase deckers, with the top deck for the long-distance
passengers who want seats, and the bottom for short-distance standees.
This approach seems to have proven itself over time.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To e-mail use neil at the above domain