The Bus Design Wars
There has been criticism from the usual suspects of the New Bus for London, saying it is just a vanity project and too expensive. It is the latter, if you don’t take into account the design and certification costs. But then when could politicians do arithmetic? Especially hard-left or hard-right ones!
In some ways though the New Bus for London, is just another skirmish in the battle for control of who designs and builds the UK’s buses. And the only winners of that will be the passengers, the bus operators and probably employment in either Northern Ireland or Yorkshire!
So what do the passengers want of a bus want other than it be reliable, easy to get on and off and comfortable?
Some would like wi-fi and I’ve seen this on buses in Reading and Cambridge.
Others might like groups of seats of four with a table and I’ve seen that in Reading.
Leather seats also feature on some buses in Cambridge. And comfortable they were too.
If you are disabled, in a wheel-chair or with a baby in a buggy, you want easy access. London’s dual-door buses make this much easier than some places, where single-door is the norm. Manchester for example, still has 40% of buses without wheel-chair access, whereas London has a figure of virtually 100% wheel-chair access. In my view single-door buses are not acceptable for wheel-chair access.
Londoners also want the hop-on/hop-off ability of the old beloved Routemaster.
So the specification of buses is going upmarket just like that of your average luxury car is.
Let’s look at the specification of the standard red London bus. It may seem very similar to other buses you see around the country, but with extra features.
All London buses have at least two doors, to ease boarding. How bad a single door is was illustrated to me on a new Wright bus in Manchester, where everybody clustered by the driver, distracting him and making the process of loading and unloading difficult. Anybody with a buggy or in a wheelchair probably couldn’t have got on or off. I was sitting next to an off duty bus-driver and he said it was only to save money that the bus company didn’t buy double-entry/exit buses. But he had to put up with all the aggro around the single door!
Note that wheel-chairs always enter or exit through the door at the middle of the bus.
London buses also talk you through the route and display where you are.
Displays on a London Bus
The picture also shows one of the security video screens on the bus. Would you commit a crime with upwards of sixty people watching?
London buses have been to this specification for some years now and even the older ones still running have two doors and route displays.
Currently, there are three main types of double deck bus, that have been delivered in the last three years or so, each delivered by a different manufacturer.
Scania OmniCity
The Scania OmniCity is built in Poland and route 56, which runs near me uses them.
Scania OmniCity
This is one loading and unloading at the Angel today.
Wright Gemini 2
The Wright Gemini 2 is built in Northern Ireland generally using Volvo chassis components.
Wright Gemini 2
There are two types; a conventional diesel bus and a hybrid version.
Alexander Dennis Enviro 400
The Alexander Dennis Enviro 400 is another British-built bus from Yorkshire.
Alexander Dennis Enviro 400
As with the Gemini, it is available in both conventional and hybrid versions.
Hybrid Bus Logo
Increasingly, this logo will be seen on the side of buses, as Transport for London have said that from 2013 all new buses must be low-or zero-emission.
I tried to get on the single New Bus for London, but couldn’t find it today, as it seemed to be very popular with bus enthusiasts.
The New Bus for London will stand or fall on how it meets the objectives I outlined earlier in this post.
The current design has three doors and two staircases, which may seem excessive, but they should speed up loading and unloading. I hope tests have been done on a mock-up with real people to prove the theory. Boeing and Airbus do this with their airliners, so why shouldn’t bus designers?
But one of the advantages of two staircases is that it gives more places to hide the some parts of the hybrid drive system, like the diesel engine, the generator and the batteries. The actual electric motors are hidden in the rear wheels and do regenerative brakimg too.
In fact, the propulsion system of the New Bus for London and all future hybrid buses, will probably change drammatically over the next couple of years.
As batteries are expensive and have to be replaced every couple of years or so, so they are one of the major running costs of a hybrid bus. But Torotrak have come up with a flywheel-based solution to store energy. Someone will make it work, even if they don’t. Their prototype looks to be smaller and cheaper than a current set of batteries.
There is also a big beast that has entered hybrid drive systems for buses and larger vehicles; BAe Systems with HibriDrive. There are a lot of new buses needed both in the UK and worldwide in the next few years and BAe Systems will eat their fill from it. They will only pour petrol on the Bus Design Wars. And we know who’s going to win that; the passengers, the bus operators and hopefully UK-based builders.
A Malaysian View on London Buses
I found this article on a Malaysian newspaper website.
It is of an interview of the Chief Executive of the Malaysian Land Public Transport Commission, where they talk about improving bus services over all of Malaysia.
What is interesting, is that they are talking about using a London model, where different private companies tender for specific routes. I won’t comment yet, but make sure you read the article.
The Orange Train for the Dutch at the London Olympics
London’s new Overground system is four lines, with a fifth to be added in October, later this year.
The Dutch will feel at home on these trains, as the colour scheme of the trains and stations is predominately orange and the line is shown in orange on the tube map.
The major line, the North London line, also travels across North London from the Olympic site at Stratford and connects to buses and trains to get to the Heineken House at Alexandra Palace. If you go further west you get to Hampstead Heath and Kew Gardens, two of the best places in London to get over a hangover.
I suspect that getting to Alexandra Palace during the Olympics may be difficult, as the two train routes from Kings Cross St. Pancras station, where the Olympic Javelin Shuttles arrive, the suburban rail to Alexandra Palace station and the Piccadilly line to Wood Green station, are crowded most of the time, even without the Games. If you can get to Alexandra Palace station, it’s a much shorter walk up the hill to the Palace.
So a better alternative might be to take the North London line from Stratford to Highbury and Islington and then take the suburban rail from there to Alexandra Palace station. It will certainly avoid the inevitable crush and wait at Kings Cross.
What Do You Call People You Don’t Know?
They had this discussion on the BBC this morning, after a bus driver called a lady babe in Brighton and she objected.
Generally, I don’t mind, except if they call me Jim. Jim was my father, as I said before.
You should never assume any nicknames and to me, ones like sir, thanks, mate and luv are generally acceptable. I notice also in London, that a lot of drivers often wave you through after your ticket has been accepted. Which is acceptable to everybody and especially those who are hard of hearing. The machine also tells you to go with a visible message.
I had to laugh though when Quentin Somerville of the BBC, then said his report was on his Twitter account called MrSommerville.
So not everyone is informal!
London Bus Myths
When we were kids, there was always a story or myth about a particular London bus route, that ever since one got a direct hit from a German bomb has gone in convoy. I know 38s, seem to run in threes, but I don’t think it was that route.
The myth round here is that 4s have a take your own line approach to getting from one end of their route to the other. This was illustrated today as I saw a 4 going towards the Islington Angel on the Essex Road. I did find though when I got home, that there had been a traffic accident.
There must be many more myths.
It’ll Be All Change On Buses
I was searching for something else and found this article about hybrid-buses in The Engineer.
One new concept, I’ve not come across before is what is called Flybus, which uses a flywheel as a battery.
I am convinced that hybrid buses are the future, as I have three routes that are partly hybrid near me. From a noise point of view they are so much better for customers and bystanders alike and of course they use a lot less fuel
Along the Cambridge Busway
Where I was going was just a short walk from a stop on the new Cambridge Busway, but because I couldn’t find anybody who knew the rules about the busway, I decided to go to my meeting in a taxi. I did however take the busway back to Cambridge City centre on the way back to the station and took these pictures.
The bus was quite smart with leather seats and wi-fi.
But the busway has a lot of design faults.
- There is no information on the busway at the station.
- It would be logical if all buses went via the main bus station at Dummer Street and the rail station. I assumed this. When I found myself dumped in the centre, I decided to have lunch and then had to queue up for another bus for the station. I’d have preferred to go straight to the station.
- There is no timing on the bus maps, so you have no idea when you might want to ask someone to pick you up.
- The bus displays at the stops, don’t say whether they go to the rail station. They don’t list the intermediate stops too, as trains do.
- As they are new modern buses, why can’t they announce the stops like all London ones do?
- The bus map is poor and lacks detail. It does have a text system to find the next bus, but you have to type in 8 letters. How come London can handle all of the metropolis with just 5 digits! Perhaps people in Cambridge like to have their fingers tested, whereas those in London can only manage 5 digits!
It all smacks of a design that wasn’t put together by the best designer. It is attention to detail, that makes tranportation systems good. London and Sheffield have informastion systems that are so much better.
Bus-Top Art
The stop at the end of my road has got one of the new video displays, which are part of bus-top art.
I tried to get a picture of the art this morning, but failed. Perhaps it wasn’t switched on yet. Or perhaps, the angle is wrong from a new hybrid 76 bus.
It is all part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
It will be interesting to see it, when it’s working properly.
Here is a video I took on February 16th, 2012
The camerawork could be better, but it does show the concept.
So This Is Clapton Pond!
Coming back home yesterday after lunch in Walthamstow, I changed buses at Clapton Pond.
Note the bus stands on the roundabout. This where the 38s turn round. So will Clapton Pond become a tourist destination, when the New Bus for London enters service on that route on the 20th February 2012.
Double-Decker Trains for HS2
According to the Sunday Times today, a design consultancy, Priestmangoode has been asked to make the trains on HS2 as sexy as possible.
I’m all for this and have stated that we should make trains more passenger friendly several times. Here’s a piece where I advocated a better approach to the trains to the West Country and the north of Scotland from London using rebuilt High Speed Diesel Trains.
Transport for London have used this design-led approach on the New Bus for London and I hope it goes well for them, when the bus is introduced next month.
So get the trains right and of course build them in the UK and we might have a railway to be proud of. As someone, who’s travelled from London to Nice on Eurostar and a TGV Duplex, we don’t have much competition from the French. The TGV Duplex may look impressive on the outside, but inside it’s rather cramped and stuffy and the ride is not as good as a High Speed Diesel Train.
The Anonymous Widower 