New Routemaster tested by Boris at Milbrook

[nctx]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring...n-test-drives-new-Routemaster-London-bus.html

They could of at least painted it.

Looks like a 21st century Bristol VR.

 

[BestWestern]

What a complete farce! :roll: £330k per bus is just plain stupid when there's absolutely nothing at all wrong with what's already on the market. There will obviously have to be some sort of initial delivery of these to stop everyone involved from looking like a complete bunch of tits, but I'd be very suprised indeed if they become even remotely popular at that price!

I'm perplexed at the line about 'GPS Technology' allowing them to 'switch to electric power in traffic blackspots such as Oxford Street' - what has GPS got to do with hybrid operation?!!

 

[NSEFAN]

Perhaps he meant that the bus knows where it is and will switch power based on its location? Seems like an odd way of doing it, as usually it is the speed which dictates which source to use.

 

[anthony263]

Here is a video of boris driving it and it includes Mr Wolmar:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13577980

Personally i have to agreee with mr wolmar about somethings.

 

[jamesontheroad]

It's true, for £8,000,000 six prototypes with no guarantee of subsequent orders seems a bit strange. However, unlike the money spent on the Mercedes Citaros, this money is at least being spent in the UK. Wrightbus have done a pretty impressive job building a running a prototype in such a short space of time.

They could of at least painted it.

Ahem... "could have" </pedant>

 

[Yew]

It Looks smart, Just a shame they look soo much better in red. It kind of looks like it should be in Back to the Future 2. Like a "here is what a routemaster will look like in 30 years. The design looks good. Now we just need to hope the ride, cabin noise, and seating layout. are up to the challenge. (maybe they could include busses in tube travelcards wshen these come into service?)

 

[nctx]

Anyone have a idea of what chassie and engine it has.

It cannot be a Scania as theres no Hybrid , he says its all made in Uk , so must be a Dennis ?

If its just a ADX Enviro 400 with a new body I don't see the point.

Or is it a Volvo.

 

[Mojo]

I've seen the mock up and it looks amazing. Glad to see a version with an engine now! I am sure time will tell about its practicalities, but so far it looks to be a lot more practical than existing omnibuses on the streets of London. Hopefully it'll be of good build quality too; even modern double deckers have a lot of noisy rattling panels, and not belch out as many fumes and not make as much of a racket as the existing monsters on the road.

One thing about the articulated vehicles is that they are smooth and quiet, let's hope this one can be the same!

As to the Woe-mar clip. What do you expect from him? His comments are about as surprising as a Keynesian economist calling for more government spending!

 

[justinsteam]

I like the new bus!

 

[bb21]

I never realised how horribly out of proportion the front glass panels are until this clip, plus I don't really get how 'special' this bus really is, other than to serve Boris's own Mars-sized egos. £330k for a bus that carries only 87 people? Thanks but no thanks. I genuinely can't see beyond it being a great big white elephant. Smoothest ride? How would you know? How many different bus rides have you been on in your whole life? First class spin.

And yes from the near side it does look somewhat like a Bristol VR.

 

[BestWestern]

I never realised how horribly out of proportion the front glass panels are until this clip, plus I don't really get how 'special' this bus really is, other than to serve Boris's own Mars-sized egos. £330k for a bus that carries only 87 people? Thanks but no thanks. I genuinely can't see beyond it being a great big white elephant. Smoothest ride? How would you know? How many different bus rides have you been on in your whole life? First class spin.

And yes from the near side it does look somewhat like a Bristol VR.

...I'd have to say I agree It looks bl**dy awful if you ask me! Paint it pink with 'Barbie' stickers on the side, maybe?!

 

[313103]

The one thing it can never be called is a ROUTEMASTER. The bus is ugly to say the least. All it is, is a Penis extension for Boris getting back into office.

 

[BestWestern]

The one thing it can never be called is a ROUTEMASTER. The bus is ugly to say the least. All it is, is a Penis extension for Boris getting back into office.

The bizarre thing is that I really don't understand why Boris ever felt that a new bus, even if it is (at the moment) unique to London, would ever really stir Londoners at all, which was always what he was getting at. It's just a bus, it isn't old or historic, and it doesn't have any personality, which the Routemasters did and which presumably was why Londoners supposedly held them close to their hearts. To a casual observer, this won't really look that far removed from the current generation of Wright's ordinary double deckers, or an AD Enviro, or whatever; it's just another 'smilie faced' modern plastic bus.

 

[jon0844]

I agree that it is pig ugly. It may be a bit nicer in red, but the glass design and curves are just OTT and not really necessary.

Getting rid of the bendy buses was fine, but there are plenty of double deckers available and running this very minute that are fine.

Is this new bus air conditioned for the £330k? That seems more expensive than a brand new train (if you counted this as one car of 4 or 5).

 

[Eng274]

£330,000 would buy you TWO tried-and-tested double deckers!

And they'd probably look better than this vulgar monstrosity. A capacity of 87 is good, but it's no more than any standard London-spec bus with sparse lower deck seating.

Anyone have a idea of what chassie and engine it has.

It cannot be a Scania as theres no Hybrid , he says its all made in Uk , so must be a Dennis ?

If its just a ADX Enviro 400 with a new body I don't see the point.

Or is it a Volvo.

Volvo didn't even apply for the tendering process, strangely. Nothing to back this up, but maybe they were worried a new RM would cannibalise sales of their own chassis rather than increase market share..who knows.

Scania made it past the first round, but conceded due to a tight timescale in turning out a prototype.

Wright won the tender with their design. I think it's an integral Wright product, similar to the Streetlite, with driveline components outsourced (engine, hybridrive kit, batteries etc).

 

[BestWestern]

Yep, bound to be an integral I'd have thought, as it's probably a bit too radical to be just a rebody job. As for being 'made in the UK', it's perfectly possible that the oily bits are from a foriegn manufacturer, it's just bolted to the rest of the bus in the UK. There are a huge number of different firms involved in making all the bits and bobs which come together to make a bus, it's highly unlikely they'd ever all be UK-based! Wabco brakes are a Yankee outfit I think, Voith and ZF trannies are from Germany or somewhere, the tyres might be Michelin or Goodyear, who knows!!

I remember a load of the initial designs were featured in Buses mag, and there were a couple of essentially updated Routemasters, one of which I recall looked superb. It was very much a 'Mini' style modern facelift, clearly based on an RM. If they'd done that, it might have meant something. It would have complimented the current TXI London Taxi, which is also very retro.

 

[anthony263]

The wright streetlight is a terrible bus, the optare solo is still much better. I dont like this new route/borismaster i prefer the 1 that what build abroad, think it was macadonia that 1 looks more like a routemaster in my opinon.

I cant see this bus being built for anywhere but london and as for the price you could even get at least 3 low floor deckers for that price.

 

[DavidBusDriver]

I agree that all of its proportions are rather odd, particularly the rear dome of the upper deck - that curved area looks like its just a bit of thin flexible plastic!

If they wanted to pay homage to the rounded dome rear ends of the RM, why not do it in the way AlexanderDennis did with the Enviro400 - curve the corners of the last upper deck window, for some reason that curve always reminds me of the Alexander bodied Atlanteans of TWPTE/Busways etc.

Still can't see what at all is wrong with the current Wright Gemini 2 offering, or the Enviro400, or even that new MCV that London General have got. All in all, as people have said one of Boris' vanity projects to get rid of bendy-buses, which I find to be suitable for the routes they operate on where people travel mostly very short distances and hop on and off. Was just his militant cyclist mates who liked trying to undertake them while they were taking left hand turns and ending up getting squashed!

 

[BestWestern]

all in all, as people have said one of boris' vanity projects to get rid of bendy-buses, which i find to be suitable for the routes they operate on where people travel mostly very short distances and hop on and off.

was just his militant cyclist mates who liked trying to undertake them while they were taking left hand turns and ending up getting squashed!

Hehe

 

[jon0844]

As I've said many times, the bendy buses weren't suited for London (or central London, or at least the routes they ran on).

But WHY did we need to invent a new type of bus for some vanity project? Just replace, as has happened already on some routes (like the 38) with a normal double decker.

One of them even has air conditioning upstairs to cool the section (mainly front) that gets red hot in the summer. This new bus bloody well better have air con throughout for the price! (Most) People will care more about comfort than what the bus looks like.

 

[BrummyBoy]

Personally i quite like the look of it from the sides and back, and its also good to see something built (or partly) in britan, however the front looks out of proportion. Also i still think some Enviro 400's with leather seats and air-con would have been better.

 

[BestWestern]

Personally i quite like the look of it from the sides and back, and its also good to see something built (or partly) in britan, however the front looks out of proportion. Also i still think some Enviro 400's with leather seats and air-con would have been better.

Wow, leather seats for central London?! The vandals would be very impressed I'm sure!

 

[BrummyBoy]

We have some in Birmingham which are still ok (excluding the rips, graffiti and blood stains) after 3 years. Plus side is they are really comfy.

 

[MCR247]

We have some in Nottingham and they are in good nic still


Surprisingly to some, were more civilised than you savages

(oj)

 

[W-on-Sea]

There were some leather-seated Scanias running around on route 148 in London a couple of years ago without coming to any harm. The areas with vandalism problems in London (which are very much less than they once were) are not in the centre of town in any case.

 

[Via Bank]

Stagecoach run a few Goldline routes (e.g. the 1 Aldershot-Farnborough-Camberley) which use off-the-shelf buses specified with leather seats, biodiesel engines and a rather revolting blue-and-diarrhoea colour scheme.

In my experience, leather seats seem to be all well and good (vandalism doesn't seem to be a major problem) until:

1. A short person unfamiliar with the route sits in one of the seats further back, and misses their stop because they can only tell where they are by what's just gone past (the seats are very high-backed);
2. Summer comes, and you are presented with a choice between standing, or soaking yourself in the sweaty after-image of a seat's previous occupant.

Then there's the problem of cost to replace when they become life-expired or vandalised (more than likely if the buses work rowdy night routes or go through more deprived areas.)

 

[jon0844]

Ryanair use leather as it's easier for them to clean them, which makes sense.

But on a bus, I've seen some (route 63) that have seat covers on all but the last 4-5 rows of seats upstairs.. which are plain plastic, presumably to make it easy to hose down the seats. The flooring even has drainage holes to make it possible to wash them.

But, the interesting thing is how people appear to have a bit more respect for new things. The old 313s on the former North London Line/North London Link were a mess, but now they have bright and shiny 378s they seem to be very well looked after. I know they have anti-etch film, but even the panels are graffiti free (well, I've not seen any yet).

 

[W-on-Sea]

As I've said many times, the bendy buses weren't suited for London (or central London, or at least the routes they ran on).

I don't entirely agree with that; high-capacity single deckers have always been required on the Red Arrow routes (being principally used to get commuters from main line termini to their workplaces in the city) - so the last two remaining RA routes were a logical place to put the bendies. Yes, there were a few problems at certain road junctions/corners, but not insurmountable ones.

And the earlier "normal" routes that the bendies went on were also generally well suited to them - as they went in a long straight line along main roads,w without awkward corners, bends, or narrow roads to negotiate. Indeed "a long straight line along one main road" is pretty much an exact description of some of those routes: certainly the 18 and 207 fit that description exactly, the 149 more or less does, and the part of the 25 outside of Central London does too.

What went wrong - ie putting them on unsuitable routes - I think seemed to come about as a result of the desire to unduly expedite the replacement of the routemasters, with the need for high-capacity, quick-boarding buses on routes like the 38 or 73 that patently weren't suited to bendies. (And indeed the conversion of the 29 from conventional double-deck buses falls into this category). [/QUOTE]

But WHY did we need to invent a new type of bus for some vanity project?

So it looks as though Boris has some kind of legacy to the main area of responsibility as mayor (ie London's transport). At present he has nothing. Yes, "Boris bikes"...but that scheme, or the initial plans for it at least, were the work of his predecessor, anything concerning the Overground too.

The problems related to the immense size (and weight) of the "Borismaster" barely seem to get a mention now...

 

[GearJammer]

Im no expert on London buses but i think it looks ok, but why does it have a door front, middle and rear? Surely front and rear would do the job?

 

[BestWestern]

Im no expert on London buses but i think it looks ok, but why does it have a door front, middle and rear? Surely front and rear would do the job?

To do with efficient loading presumably, the same as three-door bendies. Although on a rigid double decker I fail to see how it makes any sense really Does the production version have twin staircases still?