Bikinis On The Buses
H & M seemed to have moved their adverts this year from bus shelters to the buses themselves.
Bikinis On The Buses
I suppose, it’s more difficult to spray out adverts on the sides of buses. Last year a lot of their adverts were defaced.
Boris Gets Everywhere
Boris Johnson is to open a new Wrightbus factory to make chassis for the New Bus for London. This is a paragraph in the report.
Each bus costs around £354,500 and has an estimated lifespan of 14 years.
I don’t have any doubts on the cost, as that is probably an official or contractual figure.
It’s the fourteen years, that I think is wrong. Just look at some of the trains we have in this country. Take the Class 455 that works out of Waterloo to the south west of London. They were built in the early 1980s and Wikipedia has this paragraph about a recent refurbishment. Included is this sentence.
This refurbishment was so comprehensive that many passengers thought the refurbished units were new trains.
Who’s to say that in five years time or so, that New Buses for London will be refurbished and will continue to serve for many more years. London Underground used to do this type of operation with old-style Routemasters at Aldenham Works.
If you look at the design of the New Bus for London, it is very much a series of modules and components bolted together with a small diesel and the other motive power components distributed around the bus. For example, the battery is under front staircase and the electric motors in the rear wheel hubs. All of this makes continuous refurbishment and improvement a realisable prospect. In fact, I read somewhere recently, that LT1, the first New Bus for London, is off the road at the moment, as it is being upgraded to production standard. I must admit, I haven’t seen it lately, but I only note the numbers, when I pass one and I generally only do that a couple of times a day at a maximum.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these buses outlive me.
A New Bus for London Training On Route 24
I was at the front of the top deck of a 30 bus today going past Warren Street station, when I saw a New Bus for London going towards Camden Town.
As this is along route 24, I would assume it could be driver training or route proving.
The bus wasn’t showing any signs or advertising.
Are New Buses for London Female Friendly?
It may be just coincidence but on a New Bus for London from the Angel on Tuesday evening, except for the two driver/conductors and myself, everybody downstairs was female.
Bognor Is Just Like Felixstowe
it was an uneventful trip to Bognor, except for the loss of the pen. And all at a ticket cost of just £14.75 in a very clean train.
The only excitement on the way down was two Dutch tourists, who in killing time changing planes at Gatwick, decided they’d visit Crawley. Surely, there must be something better to do at the Airport!
Here are some of the pictures I took.
It could all have been Felixstowe, as I remember it as a child.
That town wasn’t the best place to be a teenager. Especially, where you had no transport, buses were rare and there were about three trains a day.
At least Bognor had a bus to get me back to the train station, which seemed to run about every fifteen minutes. I needed the bus, as I’d probably walked about three miles.
Once off the sea-front, I only passed one pub. And I think, I only saw two in the first mile or so, whilst in the town centre.
Did King George V liked a drink, and couldn’t find any in the town? Hence his supposed remarks.
Perhaps, James Joyce went there to stay sober enough to write Finnegan’s Wake.
Seven New Buses for London In A Row
Since I created my personal timetable, I usually leave my house eight or nine minutes before one of the buses arrives. I’m not changing my routine or anything, but say I’m going to Piccadilly Circus, for 11:30, I know that the 10:34 would be an ideal bus, so I break off writing at an appropriate time and walk to the stop.
Since Monday, I’ve done this seven times and caught seven New Buses for London in a row. And one of these was by accident, as I had finished and just got ready and left without reading the timetable. It actually would have been eight in a row, but yesterday, as I got to the stop, there were two 38s at the stop, so the New Bus for London overtook, the humbler buses.
My son, thinks it’s all a bit sad! He’s probably right! On the other hand, because of escalator works at Bank, Highbury and Islington, and other stations, it is a much easier and more pleasant journey on the top deck of a London bus. And if that’s in First rather than Standard Class it’s even better.
But it does show how the New Buses for London stick tightly to their timetable, with the precision of a Clerkenwell engraver. Could this be because of their proven quicker dwell time at stops, that they have the ability to pick up lost minutes?
But for whatever reason it is, it’s all good news for Londoners.
Are Cyclists Becoming The New Vegetarians?
I’ve nothing against either group, but although I hope one day to be part of the first, I doubt I’ll ever be vegetarian. I couldn’t be that today, as I’ve just had some delicious meat pate.
But in my view, there are a lot of vegetarians, who are overly touchy. I remember once being served a meal in a five-star boutique hotel with organic wholemeal bread and the vegetarian owner couldn’t get it, that wheat was bad for me. As it was organic, surely that wouldn’t cause me any harm, as animals were the problem. So C gave her both barrels as only a barrister could and we never ate in the hotel again.
Change a recipe for a chocolate bar and the veggies will get you, as Mars found out a couple of years ago.
it now appears that cyclists in London can get just as touchy about changing road layouts, as this story shows. The article even has a go at Crossrail, saying that it will bring lots of shoppers into Central London.
I regularly go to that area and it is a nightmare for everybody and especially pedestrians and cyclists. I found this out a few days ago and posted this.
The question i asked in that post is probably the correct one and the sooner we get New Buses for London in those routes around Piccadilly Circus and down the Haymarket the better, as I’m certain they would get a lot of the pedestrians out of the way. Some pedestrians might even say they’d had enough and see an open platform on a bus and go for it!
What’s the betting though, that in a few months as more and more New Buses for London appear, we will read an article about cyclists complaining about them?
Perhaps to create more road-space in Central London, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put restrictions on taxis. Now taxi-drivers are another group, who act like vegetarians and get touchy at the least provocation.
How about banning rickshaws too?
But the main thing that is needed is some good British design, followed up with a good helping of compromise!
A Bus Stop With A Carluccio’s
The Carluccio’s in Upper Street, Islington, is a uniquely convenient restaurant.
A Bus Stop With A Carluccio’s
Today, I had to get a snack lunch and then go on to Kings Cross station to pick up some rail tickets for my trip to Burnley for the last day of the football season.
So I got a 30 bus to this bus stop, had my lunch at Carluccio’s and then after lunch got on another 30 bus to the station. It really, is a conveniently placed restaurant, at one of those mini-bus interchanges, you get all over London. And Carluccio’s is not the only restaurant in walking distance of this bus stop.
I do think sometimes, that those who open restaurants forget about the buses and don’t think to place their hostelries, where passengers change buses. I can think of a couple of bus interchanges, where the cafe offerings are distinctly poor.
The New Bus for London Was On Time
This morning, I consulted my timetable and walked round the corner, so I got to the stop at 10:34.
And what happened?
A New Bus for London sailed into view and several pleased passengers got on to go to the Angel and in some cases, like me, to pastures further on.
You can’t complain about that!
There Are Mormons Everywhere!
Everywhere there are adverts for Mormons.
There Are Mormons Everywhere!
I suppose religious adverts on the buses follow the same rules as films. The more adverts there are. the worse the religion.
It gives me a bit of a problem in that I don’t travel on a bus advertising something I don’t like or disapprove of. Oxford Circus is also wall-to-wall with the adverts, so that gives me another problem, as that is a difficult station to avoid.
The Anonymous Widower 