A Pattern For New Buses for London Is Starting To Emerge
Next month on the 22nd, London bus route 24, gets the New Bus for London. Route 24 has always been a high-profile route and was the first to have the new RML Routemasters in the late 1960s. So it wasn’t a surprise to me, that this route through the homes of the chattering classes, was the first to be wholly converted. The route has a peak requirement of 26 buses according to Wikipedia.
Now it has been announced that Route 11, will be the next to be upgraded to new buses from September 21st. According to the report 25 buses will be used to replace a current requirement of 26. This reduction is probably to be expected as anybody who uses Route 38 regularly as I do, knows that over a distance, they are faster than their normal cousins, as they spend less time at stops. More than once, I’ve noticed four or more 38’s indicated on the display at a bus stop and when they arrive, it’s the New Bus for London leading the convoy.
Will the introduction on Route 11 lead to complaints as they are going down one of the most congested roads in London; Kings Road, Chelsea? On the other hand, it is just the sort of road, where the hop-on and hop-off facility of the buses will come into its own. Hopefully, it’ll entice a few of Chelsea’s residents out of their tractors. It’ll be interesting to read about how the buses are received on Route 11.
Both Route 24 and 11, have a peak requirement of about 25 buses, so as 600 of these buses are expected to be delivered in the next few years, that means they’ll run on 24 routes, if they go in batches of 25.
The more you look at it, the more the introduction of the eight prototype buses on Route 38, was a well-thought out trial to find out how they would be received by the public and how they would perform.
For a start, the terminus at Hackney Central is close to their depot at Ash Grove, so if a bus went AWOL, it could easily be replaced in service by one of the other normal buses on the route. In fact, I’ve not heard of any rumours of serious problems with these buses, although I did see one broken down in the Essex Road. One apparently, also got white-vanned up the backside.
Route 38, is a very cosmopolitan route, with every type of person using the buses, as it goes through both some expensive housing and some big estates, not known for being genteel. So they would get feedback from all sorts and I suspect they have.
Route 38 is also one, with lots of varied traffic conditions, from routes that tend to be pretty clear for a lot of the day, to the congestion of the West End.
I think they have only one major problem, and that is that if Transport for London decided to redeploy the Hackney 8, there would be a lot of protests.
I believe that to use some of the six hundred New Buses for London to fully upgrade Route 38, could be one of the positive things that could be done to give a stimulus to Hackney.
Don’t Have Your Operation On A Friday
This report on the BBC, about research by Paul Aylin at Imperial College, says that you are more likely to die, if you have your operation towards the end of the week.
Some years ago, my software Daisy, was used to examine the outcomes of surgery in a Regional Health Authority. They found, that the longer a patient was in hospital, the more likely there would be complications.
This data needs a lot more analysis.
The Anonymous Widower 