The buses are apparently priced in the region of £70-£80k, with enquiries from South Africa and Australia so far, but no firm offers.The buses are likely those currently operating the 507 and 521 routes, which will be first to disappear from service (standard single deckers will replace them).
Arrrgh. Can this madness please stop now? The 521 is a perfect bendy route (and I don't know about you, but I love flying through the Strand underpass on one - Waterloo to Holborn in 3 minutes!). I live in fear of the day that they get rid of the bendies on the 149, it will be chaos. What's more, apparently Boris has said that passengers will be able to board the new single deckers on the 521 from both doors. This will a) totally undermine the idea that bendies are the only buses where you can board by all doors, thus increasing the number of back door boarders on other routes and b) undermine Boris' objection to bendies, which was that they encouraged fare evasion.
ReplyDeleteI am currently in Sydney, where they have the bendy buses on a number of routes and they don't seem to be causing any controversy. I can imagine the Aussies snapping them up (at the right price).
ReplyDeleteMuch as I dislike these buses on the wrong route, on right routes they out to be kept. Still, logic is woefully short on all of this.
ReplyDeleteThe doors thing is madness though.
Does anyone know the date that the 507 and 521 services will stop using bendy buses?
ReplyDeleteThanks
So what level of overall service reduction is this going to lead to?
ReplyDeleteStandard single deckers hold considerably less people but maybe there will be more of them to compensate? Are these routes busy? I know route 25 is always packed. Withdrawing bendy buses on that will require double deckers or twice as many buses.
The sad thing is that the perfect solution to fare dodging on routes like 25 (where it is rife) is already in operation on Tramlink. If people had to touch in at the bus stops, and could not touch in on the buses themselves, then the fare dodgers could easily be caught out by the inspectors and would soon learn to pay up or sod off.
Regarding the idea that rear door access on the 507 and 521 would undermine plans to stop fare evasion, while I do not know the figures I would imagine it is currently very low on those two routes. They are aimed at commuters and providing accessible ways to connect railway stations, and so the majority of their patronage is by people holding season tickets and travelcards etc.
ReplyDeleteThe do not serve residential areas and so will have very few point-to-point journeys, and those who do use them in that way would be by people getting around in central London who will already have a ticket to have got there.
I also do not see them undermining the way people use buses in places like Hackney and Stratford. It seems quite a reach to suggest this is going to lead to greater far evasion. The majority of London's bus users do not even use these routes. But that aside, it is possible to see them operate differently because of the type they rather than their physical design. In the same way that the way you pay for buses changes in central London. Those who are going to try and evade fares buy using the rear doors will do so regardless. And then, if like around here, the driver will simply switch off the engine and refuse to move until they pay.
Anyway.
The change to single deckers on 507 and 521 are due to the low bridge at Waterloo and the Aldwych underpass making them unsuitable for double decker use. All other bendy routes will be replaced by double deckers.
The changeover on these routes is expected in the summer, depending on when the full fleet of new buses arrive so they can switch over. The peak frequency will be 3-4 minutes on the 507 (currently every 5 minutes) and every 2-3 minutes on the 521 (currently every 3 minutes). There will also be a weekend service added on the 507.
In terms of capacity though there would be a reduction based on the peak vehicle requirement. Based on the capacity figures TfL gave London Travelwatch of 120 passengers on a bendy bus and 65 on a 12 metre single decker, this would see the 507 fall from 1,080 (PVR 9 bendy) to 975 (PVR 15 single decker). On the 521 it will drop from 2,280 (PVR 19 bendy) to 2,080 (PVR 32 single decker)
The first 'normal' route to convert will be the 38 which is expected to be in November. This will have a PVR of 72 double decker buses, average capacity of 85, compared to the current 47 bendy buses.
This would make the new peak capacity on the route 6,120 passengers, an increase over the current 5,640 with bendy buses. Also a bendy bus has 49 seats so this only sees 2,303 available at the peak compared to 4,320 with double deckers, assuming 60 seats on those. This is more important on routes like this where passengers make longer journeys than the short hops on something like the 507 or 521, which bendy buses are more suited.
Also, a bendy bus at 18 metres long means currently they take up to 846m of road space, while a standard double decker is up to 10.6m long, so even with that number of buses will only use 763.2m of road space. Given the problems caused by the lower maneuverability of longer vehicles this should lead to less congestion despite such a high number of vehicles required.
On the length thing, because the 507/521 are replaced by 12m non-artic Citaros, the total length at max PVR is about 20% more, so you'd expect more congestion, if congestion is correlated with total roadspace taken up by bus.
ReplyDeleteOn the 38 the total length is a lot shorter, but no one has ever tried to run that route as a single-entry DOO operation before, it's either been two crew RM or artic. The congestion, if it occurs, will be the result of extended dwell time bunching the buses up, not long buses blocking crossings (which IMHO is greatly exaggerated, although not wholly untrue).
On capacity, the hit is taken off-peak, where the same number of smaller vehicles run. This is a particular problem for the less mobile passengers, like parents with buggies or the elderly, since they'll be sharing proportionately less downstairs space (49 seats + 2 buggy areas down to 27 seats + 1 buggy area). Still, there's sufficient prejudice against both groups around the place for this not to matter, really.
The oddest thing about the 507/521 conversion is that no one actually supports it, to the extend of explaining how it will make the world a better place - the most supportive comments on the change are probably from London Travelwatch, who welcomed the extension to Sundays.
I agree with Ricolas that there are right routes and wrong routes for the bendies. One surprisingly good one is the 406F (the Epsom races special), which might indicate their suitability for outer London routes with both high patronage and high turnover.
ReplyDeleteSo someone are you off your soap box yet?
ReplyDeleteBottom line is Bendies have a place and the Red Arrow routes in particular are ideal.
In fact I would say most of the current routes are ideal for the reasons Tom has indicated.
But guess most decker foamers just don't get it and would rather the RM's were brought back into use.
Interesting that "someone" considers the Red Arrows don't serve residential areas. They've clearly not walked down a side road off the 507 route where plenty of people were living last time I looked. The 521 is more marginal I'll grant you but it's not getting the evening and weekend service.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line is that bendy buses work well on a number of London routes. People have short memories of how long double deckers sat still at stops when they ran the 29 and 149 to name but two examples which had OPO buses prior to bendies arriving.
I appreciate many will not agree with retaining bendies for whatever reason be it personal or whipped up by certain publications. It would be lovely to imagine rationality could return to transport planning in London but it seems there is little prospect of that happening.
I am so worried about the onload offload times of buses. I just dont understand why no talks about this factor.
ReplyDelete"I just dont understand why no talks about this factor."
ReplyDeleteI did, regarding the 38. The 507 and 521 won't suffer in this regard because they have at least the same loading capacity as their bendy predecessors owing to the retention of all door boarding (that and them being shorter versions of the same type of bus with the bend taken out and coming more often*).
* and costing more to run, of course.
it's ridiculous boris johnson dosent get the route 436 or the route 12 that run from south london to central, and at rush hour (5pm) thoes busses are packed full of passengers he has no right to scrap the bendies which serve more than a usefull purpose. for boris johnson this is a personal vendetta & he has not botherd to even think about people who dont use cycles and depend on those bendies. mark my words this subject gets me so infuriated as i think after boris gets voted out the next mayor will reintroduce the bendie bus, or even now a more simpler soulution just keep the most vital bendy bus routes. thoes busses are being kept in storage but i cant see them being sold anytime soon (which is good so if their brought back into servis we wont have to spend a penny to do so). the fare dodging is a problem but it does happen on many other non - bendie routes (belive me as a 19 year old it does) but as people say why dont they reintroduce the conductor on all busses, becuase when they bring back the routemaster they must surely bring them back to right??. but also in my days of traveling to school on routemasters (36 & 12) even with a conductor people have, will and always continue to dodge the conductor (i know this contradicts with bringing them on the bendy bus routes). my final comments are i hope there will be a public show of support to bring back the buses that have been wrongfully critisised by cyclists & who eles.....no one that wernt anti - ken livingstone, and hopefully the people who use that bus the women who were pregnant, the men & women who took pushchairs on the bendies with ease (with two buggie spaces), the wheel chair users & most importantly the people who want to get from a to b in litte time.
ReplyDeleteThanks Logan Emeric Sesay Keller (also supporting the cause on facebook)
p.s thank you ken livingstone for taking this city forward am sorry for you to see it's being taken backwards.