Barry Salter writes
The changes were announced back in March.

"To slash the time buses spend at stops, from this summer the few
remaining cash passengers will need to buy tickets before boarding in
London's West End. Starting in August more than 300 ticket machines will
serve all the stops in the West End used by 60 routes to enable
passengers to buy single journey or day pass tickets before getting on
the bus. This is expected to cut boarding times by more than 10 per
cent."

TfL conveniently seem to have forgotten about all the Routemasters
running in the West End, which don't suffer from the increased boarding
times of most OPO buses as they have a separate conductor performing
revenue duties...Ho hum...

They most certainly haven't forgotten them. They have, though, realised
that they can't continue forever. DDA rules [1] would mean (unless some
specific exemption was granted) that the remaining Routemasters would
have to be retired by 2017 at the very latest.

So whilst the existing fleet may be able to soldier on for a few more
years, TfL want to do something to decrease boarding times on
non-Routemaster routes. They tried crew-operation with modern buses on
the 55 - that didn't work as people still tried to pay the driver on
boarding. So we now have the bendy-bus (which looks to be the favourite
for future conversions of Routemaster-operated services) and cashless
boarding (as trialled on the W7).

[1] The Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000
http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/s...0/20003318.htm
--
Dave