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.

I did not state that T.F.L. is a quango.



Not that TFL is a Quango.

Anyway it's not a sad day, good riddance to the too warm,

That's a joke - have you been on the upper deck of one of the oven-like
replacement buses?

too cold

this is nonsense: if the windows are open, that's the passengers' or
conductor's fault, not the fault of the bus design

tiny
midget buses


how can you call a double-decker a midget bus?


Marc.

Paul Corfield wrote in message . ..

Yep - I cannot imagine what the events will be like when the very last
one leaves service if the experience of the last days of route 8 and now
9/73 and 390 are anything to go by.

like 'The Elephant Will Never Forget'?

"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...

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

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

You think wrong. They call it "nutrition" and possibly "immigration", but we
are not evolving to be noticeably taller within one generation.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

"John Rowland" typed


"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...

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

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

You think wrong. They call it "nutrition" and possibly "immigration", but we
are not evolving to be noticeably taller within one generation.

I think the clothing manufacturers would disagree.
Anyway, if the average height increases by an inch, the percentage of
men over, say, six feet tall increases from about 10% to about 25% given
a normal distribution.

If anything, immigation would have reduced the average height. IIRC the
Met Police dropped their height restrictions to allow more Asians to
join.

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.

In article , Annabel Smyth wrote:

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!

At 6' and thin as a stick, I'm within the "loading gauge" for most
train/bus seats (though I do have the problem of my legs being crammed
up against the seat in front of me on many buses), but I agree
wholeheartedly with Annabel's statement! The designers of slammers like
VEPs and CIGs seemed at least dimly aware that actual humans would be
using their vehicles...

Niklas
--
"If one loop goes HX-T4-T123-HX and the other goes HX-T123-T5-HX, then the
diagram will need to resemble a pair of testicles at the end of the line, no?"
-- Ben Nunn, on the extension of the London Tube to Heathrow's Terminal 5

--- "Mait001" wrote...

As for standing, yes, I hope you will enjoy standing between,
for example, Tottenhama and Victoria, because the number
of seats per passenger has been drastically reduced with
bendy buses.

I wouldn't want make a journey that long by bus in the first place. I'd
probably take One to Liv St then the Circle Line to Victoria. Or if I was
*really* in a hurry, the Victoria Line all the way. Buses are only last
resort means of travel for when there's no other public transport
alternative.

Personally, if I pay a fare for a journey, I
expect to be able to sit.

Sitting on a bus isn't easy either. There's just not enough legroom on most
seats, so I normally end up standing anyway. On routemasters, the
alternative is those sideways seats that we're supposed to give up for the
elderly and children. Even though the elderly and children are normally
small enough to fit into regular seats anyway!

(You are right on one thing though. Tall people should pay less because
we're forced to stand so often. The fact that we don't is more *proof* that
the world is run by an evil conspiracy of midgets dedicated to spreading
suffering amongst those taller than them!)


I happen to be very short

Ah-ha! I *knew* it...

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?

Single decker buses are the solution for both of us. No stairs for you, no
low ceilings for me. Perfect. We should both be glad to see them replacing
routemasters.

Seriously, name one good thing about routemasters. Go on, just one.
They're not even nice to look at thanks to that ugly great hole at the back
where some penny-pinching accountant must have decided that there wasn't
enough money for proper doors! Compare that to the sleek, stylish lines of
modern buses, designed by proper designers, not a committee of bean-counting
bureaucrats.

Ugly on the outside, cramped on the inside. No redeeming features at all.

--- "Annabel Smyth" wrote...

But we no longer have conductors to help disabled people get on and off,
to tell us when our stop is, and generally to keep the buses free of
unpleasantness

True, but there's nothing to stop TfL employing conductors on modern buses
if they wanted to. There's no law that says they can *only* be used on
routemasters. (In fact, I'd love to see conductors on *all* buses between
3pm and 4.30pm just to keep the kids quiet!)


As for cramped - you obviously don't have to travel on tiny buses like
the P5 or the 322....

No, never been on the P5. Don't even know where it runs. As for the 322,
anywhere I'd want to go on it is also served by the 432 or the 3, so in
practice I don't need to use it. But I still wouldn't use either of them
even if they were routemasters!

On Sat, 4 Sep 2004 08:55:07 +0100, "Solar Penguin"
wrote:


Friendly??? How is giving a painful crick in the neck everyone over 6ft 3in
friendly? That isn't friendly, it's evil! Buy a dictionary and learn the
difference between the two words.



OK - I'm a mere 6ft. No seating in city buses is particularly
comfortable but I find that the Routemasters have more seats per bus
that are *adequate* for me than the newer double-deckers. I haven't
yet been on a bendy in London but I would expect that to be even more
the case with bendies: they are comfortable provided that you get one
of a limited number of good seats. That's my personal experience;
others might have different perceptions. In the same way I prefer the
firm ride of the Routemaster to that of most other buses, though apart
from the ghastly floaty DAF buses which I really make an effort to
avoid, the current one-person buses are much better than some of the
long-forgotten London buses of the 1970s.

At least the 73 changeover was accompanied by some publicity on the
route itself, and as an Oyster card holder I received an e-mail from
TfL (I replied commenting that bendies didn't seem very suitable
vehicles). Some of the earlier changeovers were given less publicity
than some very straightforward alterations to vehicles or operators on
some other routes.

Martin

Martin

On 04 Sep 2004 12:03:22 GMT, are (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. Has
anyone else formed the same impression?

I remember the end of the RTs, notably finding an excuse to travel on
the 140 which was one of the last RT routes circa 1978, and yes, I did
form the same impression.

Partly that's could be accounted for simply by age: the oldest RTs at
the time must have been a bit newer than the newest Routemasters are
now. But mostly it was simply the end of one particular model of bus;
now we are seing the end of a whole way of operating buses. In the
1970s there were still buses with engines at the front and open
platforms at the back elsewhere in Britain - albeit rapidly on the way
out by the time that the last RTs were used in London. And, at the
end of the 1970s, continuing crew operation seemed assured for the
time being in London, after being threatened in the late 1960s and
early 1970s; in fact a lot of the then new rear engined buses were
used with conductors

This is different: Routemasters have outlived most other open-platform
buses by 20 years (the resurgence in crew operation, particularly in
Scotland, in the late 1980s was all using Routemasters that had been
withdrawn from use in London), and the open platform bus has become
synonymous with London much more than it has with Britain as a whole.

Finally, I think the Routemaster has a sronger claim than the RT to be
a design and engineering classic: Douglas Scott's industrial design,
and innovative suspension, brakes, and construction which set out to
be way ahead of their time.

Martin

Seriously, name one good thing about routemasters. Go on, just one.

I'll give you ten:

1. Windows that open at the front of the upper deck.
2. Fuel efficiency (ever tried standing near the rear of a more modern bus: the
engine emissions change the climate for several feet in area).
3. Ease of maintenance.
4. Conductors.
5. Upper deck on which to get away from the melee downstairs
6. Excellent suspension.
7. Superbly ergonomically designed and aesthetic from all angles.
8. Excellent drver visibility.
9. Aluminium construction ensuring less weight, i.e. less wear & tear on roads.
10. The rear upper storey seats are the nearest thing I will ever experience to
being in a (double-decker) limousine!

They're not even nice to look at thanks to that ugly great hole at the back
where some penny-pinching accountant must have decided that there wasn't
enough money for proper doors!

That's just a ridiculous assertion: absence of doors is the whole point. Also,
at the time of their design, fitted doors on buses were illegal.


Compare that to the sleek, stylish lines of
modern buses, designed by proper designers, not a committee of bean-counting
bureaucrats.

Utter rubbish. Do you realy think at TPL or whatever they are now called are
more aesthetically pleasing?

Ugly on the outside, cramped on the inside. No redeeming features at all.

Several million will disagree with you there.

Marc.