Saturday 5 July 2008

First bendy buses withdrawn next year

The Guardian is reporting that Boris will replace bendy buses with good old-fashioned double deckers as soon when the contracts come up for renewal between next year and 2015. This will start with three routes next year, including the 38 (Victoria-Angel-Dalston-Hackney-Clapton), which coincidentally or not was one of the only routes converted directly from Routemaster to bendy.

Boris Watch has an excellent list of bendy bus routes and contracts, and surmises the other two routes to go next year will be two out of the 12, 25, 73, 507 and 521. Routes are presumed to be staying bendy until at least their contract renewal date, which for the 436 and 453 is after the next Mayoral election.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Be interesting to see how the media covers the progressive withdrawal and the attendant capacity alterations or operating cost increases.

Bendibuses seem to me to be like the NHS - everybody grumbles about them but not enough to stop using them.

I daresay when the first Routemasters were introduced, there were plenty of folk complaining about how dangerously wide they were, too many seats for the conductor to get round all the fares, bring back the RT zzzzzzz

Tom said...

Thanks for the link, mate, greatly appreciated. Note that I'm entirely sure I'll dig up more stuff and refine it in future.

plcd1 said...

It is worth noting that the 25 and 73 have had a 2 year contract extension recently awarded. The 507 and 521 Red Arrows are the earliest routes to be retendered and I don't see how they can be replaced by double decks at all. It'll be back to rigid, virutally no seats single decks like those that ran these routes before the bendies appeared. The 38 follows the Red Arrows in the retendering programme. Nothing has been announced about the 12 yet.

pubby said...

The 521 goes through the Strand Underpass at peak times, which only a bendy bus or conventional single-decker could achieve.

I've never understood the arguments against bendy buses.

Anonymous said...

I can understand removing the bendy buses from 25, 12 73 and the rest. But those buses are so suited to routes 507 and 521 would be so stupid to remove them.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Boris would like to try and get on a peak hours route 38 operated by a double decker!
I and many others used to watch several Routemasters go by full up and since the bendy buses this is much less of an issue.

Anonymous said...

The problem i find with the 38 is crossing the road outside Angel station. Because of the nature of the junction with liverpool road, the bendy 38 just sits across the pedestrian crossing when travelling south. This means pedestrians can't cross at all. It's situations like this that put up backs. And since there are fewer bendy bus users than other people in London, the tide has been turning against them.

Tom said...

Surely the tide-turning point is only valid where there are more pedestrian-crossing-where-bendies-are-a-problem users than bendy-users-who'd-be-inconvenienced-by-a-change-of-vehicle users.

Since not all of London ever gets inconvenienced by a bendy bus (I walk a lot but never have been, mainly because I don't walk near bendy routes, much) but nearly everyone riding on these busy routes would be seriously so, I'm not sure the tide is turning, really.

Not that bendy bus route users are going to be consulted, of course.

Jeremy said...

"everybody grumbles about them but not enough to stop using them"

Erm, yeah. Because there's often no choice. Got to get to work, got to get the bus. Got to get to uni, got to get the bus.

I don't like bendy buses, but I agree that moving back to the current load of double-deckers isn't a solution.

Let's hope the the Borisbus turns out well...

Anonymous said...

I am glad that I moved away from London and don't contribute to the GLA anymore why Londoners voted for Boris is beyond me the man is a joke and doesn't have a clue.

Anonymous said...

This seems a bit pointless if you ask me. Not that I am a particular fan of bendy buses, but I certainly don't have any particular problem with them. They're very easy to get on and off compared with double deckers (why on earth does everyone cluster round the front door?) and if TFL or whoever has spent millions on these buses, why not use them until the end of their practical lives rather than scrapping them and spending more millions on new double deckers?

Anonymous said...

i also echo what anonymous said about the 38 and the 73 routes. When these were run by Routemasters, they were an absolute nightmare. The Routemasters would fill up after a few stops and then blast all the way from central London out to beyond Essex Rd/Upper St before being able to pick anyone else up. This is far less of a problem with teh bendies.