In message .com,
writes
Its a shame they wont run into the evening, I always enjoyed seeing
tourists catch their forst sight of a floodlit St Pauls as they sat on
the top deck going up Ludgate Hill

If (*if*) the routes are the success I hope they are, then perhaps
evening operation will follow? After all, there are evening open top
bus tours, both in summer and around Christmas for the lights.

For some reason, I find myself on the edge of my seat with anticipation
of what route numbers they'll use! I think I need a rest....... :-)
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

In article .com,
() wrote:

Colin (both of you!), maybe they do mean 3 spares per route, but that
is not actually what the press release says. Perhaps I am just being
too pedantic.

That being so, a 60% "spare" capacity for a bus route must be a World
record! Or are they just being realistically pessimistic as to the poor
maintenance (as sadly seen so often on the remaining Routemasters) that
is to be expected, and that 3 out of the 5 buses can be expected to
break down on each route every day?!

Or need to be off the road for maintenance, yes. It's not as if they don't have the spare buses after all. Presumably some will be cannibalised too.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Ian Jelf wrote:
In message .com,
writes
Its a shame they wont run into the evening, I always enjoyed seeing
tourists catch their forst sight of a floodlit St Pauls as they sat on
the top deck going up Ludgate Hill

If (*if*) the routes are the success I hope they are, then perhaps
evening operation will follow? After all, there are evening open top
bus tours, both in summer and around Christmas for the lights.

For some reason, I find myself on the edge of my seat with anticipation
of what route numbers they'll use! I think I need a rest....... :-)
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE there to be a successful Routemaster
route or routes running for many years to come but, I firmly believe,
this is a Mickey Mouse proposal by Mickey Mouse people and will likely
last 1 or 2 years at the most.

5 buses per route, on these restricted hours (and distance) is destined
to fail. No doubt the fools who put forward this proposal want to be
seen to be "doing their bit" for London's heritage, but that virtually
invisible service will satisfy nobody - hardly anyone (except dedicated
Routemaster enthusiasts) is going to wait up to 15 minutes for a bus on
a route that is already served by several other buses. The only people
likely to travel on it are those who, by sheer coincidence, are at the
bus stop at the right time. This will eventually be proved to be the
case, the service will be uneconomic (the economies of scale of
"proper" bus routes clearly being absent from this toytown approach)
and the number-crunchers at T.F.L. (who are presumably going to
subsidise the route) will deem it uneconomic and abolish it. And,
saddest of all, hardly anyone will notice its demise.

There will be poor maintenance and cannibalisation (hardly a portent of
a long-term future in any event!). The buses will become shabbier and
shabbier, the service even less reliable - if one of the buses doesn't
run (due to staff failure, for example), there will be a half-hour
headway. Not the sort of time tourists will be willing to spend
standing at a bus stop on the off-chance that another Routemaster may
eventually appear. All of this will add to the arguments for its
abolition.

What an ignominious end to the once mighty Routemaster.

Marc.

wrote:
Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE there to be a successful Routemaster
route or routes running for many years to come but, I firmly believe,
this is a Mickey Mouse proposal by Mickey Mouse people and will likely
last 1 or 2 years at the most.

5 buses per route, on these restricted hours (and distance) is destined
to fail. No doubt the fools who put forward this proposal want to be
seen to be "doing their bit" for London's heritage, but that virtually
invisible service will satisfy nobody - hardly anyone (except dedicated
Routemaster enthusiasts) is going to wait up to 15 minutes for a bus on
a route that is already served by several other buses. The only people
likely to travel on it are those who, by sheer coincidence, are at the
bus stop at the right time. This will eventually be proved to be the
case, the service will be uneconomic (the economies of scale of
"proper" bus routes clearly being absent from this toytown approach)
and the number-crunchers at T.F.L. (who are presumably going to
subsidise the route) will deem it uneconomic and abolish it. And,
saddest of all, hardly anyone will notice its demise.

There will be poor maintenance and cannibalisation (hardly a portent of
a long-term future in any event!). The buses will become shabbier and
shabbier, the service even less reliable - if one of the buses doesn't
run (due to staff failure, for example), there will be a half-hour
headway. Not the sort of time tourists will be willing to spend
standing at a bus stop on the off-chance that another Routemaster may
eventually appear. All of this will add to the arguments for its
abolition.

What an ignominious end to the once mighty Routemaster.

Marc.

Marc - that's a thoroughly pessimistic, and quite possibly realistic
outlook. However the future is not predestined, so your bleak view of
things to come will only ring true if the routes are poorly patronised.
Fans of the Routemaster can help by spreading the word about it,
pestering TfL to promote it better in the event they fail to do so, and
actually doing some unofficial promotion themselves etc etc.

Mizter T,

Pessimistic, bleak and realistic! I also write from the experience of
the predetermined way things are done in British transport, with mere
lip service being paid to public opinion.

Many of the railway lines deemed unprofitable and ripe for closure
under Beeching's infamous report were made unprofitable and it became a
self-fulfilling phrophesy. Trains were run at times deliberately
inconvenient to passengers, ticketing was made unnecessarily difficult
etc., and so the arguments in favour of retaining these lines withered
away. To add insult to injury, reduction of crews and unstaffed
stations was just around the corner anyway, and would have altered the
economic arguments significantly, but those inevitable developments
were not allowed to play any part in the mad rush to close down the
many branchlines that closed.

The Routemaster saga is starting from a similarly uneconomic situation:
5 buses per route on 2 routes that run only during the day and exclude
both peaks, using buses that are going to be so dilapidated that 3
spares have to be kept for each route (60% spare capacity!) and a
likely high staff turnover (what sort of "career structure" can the 50
odd conductors have, except moving on to better-paid jobs elsewhere?!),
low morale, with inevitable passenger disenchantment. What is worse
than conductorless buses? Buses with surly, uninterested
conductors.....

I don't believe that T.F.L. have any genuine long-term commitment to
keeping Routemasters in London, on any basis at all. Their abject
disdain for the Routemasters and the rush to get rid of the few
remaining proper routes as quickly as possible is proof enough of this.
The 14s (and 22s I think) had at least a year more of their contracts
to run - but they were peremptorily curtailed in the rush to
de-Routemaster London as soon as possible.

"Pestering them to promote" the service etc., will be whistling in the
dark. Of course the final nail in the coffin will be the poor
maintenance of the buses - inevitable without the regular overhauls
which kept them going so superbly for their first 30-40 years. Just
look at how shabby the Routemasters on the 3 remaining routes are.
Frankly, they are an embarrassment. Almost daily I see one on route 38
being towed back to Clapton. When there were around 2,700 on London's
streets, I doubt that so many broke down every day!


Sorry to continue in such pessimistic vain: the people running London's
transport now are morons and/or intellectual pygmies: Bendibuses are an
abhorrence in our crowded streets and that one fact alone shows that
the powers that be haven't the first idea or care about either public
opinion or the practicalities of running a World-class transport
service.

Marc.

On 13 Sep 2005 13:42:35 -0700, "
wrote:


Sorry to continue in such pessimistic vain: the people running London's
transport now are morons and/or intellectual pygmies: Bendibuses are an
abhorrence in our crowded streets and that one fact alone shows that
the powers that be haven't the first idea or care about either public
opinion or the practicalities of running a World-class transport
service.

Marc.

London's buses are carrying more people than any time since the early
1970s, cover considerably more roads than ever in the past, operate at
frequencies not seen since the 1960s, have a superb night bus network
that is better than most cities' daytime network, and are providing a
service more reliable than at any time since the 1950s.

Yeah, some morons!!!!!

I remember only too well, in 'the good old days' of the early 1970s,
waiting at Hounslow bus station on a Sunday for a Routemaster on the
73 to take me home to Twickenham....waiting for an HOUR or more was
common, because LT turned most buses at Hammersmith or Richmond to get
the poor crews home for their tea!

Today, if I have to wait more than 5 minutes for a 281 from Hounslow
to Twickenham I start getting annoyed!!

Put those rose-tinteds away!

"cover considerably more roads than ever in the past": how very true of
Bendybuses!

Well, I need no rose-tinted spectacles to remind me of how appalling
the buses in my area once were (28, 295 and 91 until it was abolished)
and waits of up to an hour on a 3-route section between Fulham Broadway
and Wandsworth Bridge were not unknown!

Sadly, waits of up to half an hour are still fairly common on what is
still a 3-route stretch (28, 295 and C4 or whatever than "invisible
route is now numbered); curtailments at Fulham Broadway or Wandsworth
Bridge are still commonplace, as is re-routing at the Clapham Junction
end of the 295, leaving passengers at the South end of Plough Lane
without a bus at all.

I was not making a point about bus services in general, merely at the
state of mind of T.F.L.'s upper echelons who despise the one form of
transport that has been tried and tested in London for about a Century
(crewed open-platfom double-deck motor buses) and choose to replace it
with expensive, inefficient, noisy, heat-emitting, road-occupying,
unmaneouvreable, clumsy, seat-scarce foreign-built monsters, whose
drivers appear only barely able to handle them As an example of the
latter point alone: have you ever been on a 521 Bendybus as it
terminates at Waterloo Road, where it mounts the kerb as it turns left
and anyone not holding on tightly or within striking distance of a
bulkhead or railing will have the bruises to prove the fact?.

Yes, anyone inflicting this horror on London's passengers is a moron.

Marc.

On 12 Sep 2005 11:46:43 -0700, "
wrote:

Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE there to be a successful Routemaster
route or routes running for many years to come but, I firmly believe,
this is a Mickey Mouse proposal by Mickey Mouse people and will likely
last 1 or 2 years at the most.

I share some of your cynicism about this venture. However too many
people are watching the initiative for it to be ditched too quickly.

There will be poor maintenance and cannibalisation (hardly a portent of
a long-term future in any event!). The buses will become shabbier and
shabbier, the service even less reliable - if one of the buses doesn't
run (due to staff failure, for example), there will be a half-hour
headway. Not the sort of time tourists will be willing to spend
standing at a bus stop on the off-chance that another Routemaster may
eventually appear. All of this will add to the arguments for its
abolition.

Given that First and Stagecoach have the contracts for the routes and
they both did probably the best job of keeping their Routemasters
pristine (remember route 7 and route 8 vehicles?) then I think they will
be very well maintained and presented. I also imagine that they will be
able to pick and choose the best conductors from those who have been
sacked from the other routes. If they have been unable to get
replacement jobs then I can see they would be quite keen on working on
these services. Being able to hand pick the best recruits should mean a
good level of customer service. It's not an ideal situation but I think
we should see what happens in reality.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

I don't think Stagecoach are looking for the 'best' conductors, rather
staff will be expected to be multi-functional to cover both driver and
conductor roles which will of necessity rule out the 'life's eternal
conductor' stalwarts which hung on to the end and refused to train for
driver, or who trained amd failed.

Also though I certainly recall BW and U's RM/Ls in pristine condition,
the efforts of First left far more to be desired, especially in later
years. Why wasn't such a small niche operation tendered to one single
operator? The 'competion' element was in the initial tendering process
and will come up for grabs again next time around.

What's to say both fleets won't end up being garaged side-to-side in
adjoining premises in Waterden Road?