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Routemaster will soon be back on our streets
24.10.08
LONDON'S new Routemaster bus will operate on a scale far wider than expected but the much-hyped public competition to design it is a sideshow, according to a senior Transport for London manager.
As the Mayor, Boris Johnson, prepares to unveil the results of the competition, it has emerged that TfL will order up to 800 of the open-platform new Routemasters, almost double the expected number. They will serve all central London's busiest routes, not just bendy routes.
The design contest has attracted around 470 entries, including one from Norman Foster. But David Hampson-Ghani, TfL's programme manager for new buses, said it was seen inside TfL as "almost a consultation" to the key effort, talks with the manufacturers.
The Standard can also reveal that TfL has been engaged in extensive below-the-radar discussions with Britain's major bus manufacturers about building the new bus and Britain's biggest two firms said they were "very interested".
"The key objective is to replace the current buses that are used on central London's busiest bus routes," said Mr Hampson-Ghani in a recent presentation to the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport obtained by the Standard. "It's not about replacing bendy buses, it's about replacing whatever is operating at the moment and that may include bendy buses.
"We will simply hand over a folder of the winning designs [from the competition] to whoever wins the manufacturing tender and say: 'See what you can do with these.' The ultimate aim is to have a single manufacturer who will work up the design, prototype it and then build it." Conductor operation and an open platform, however, are non-negotiable.
An invitation to tender will be issued in February 2009 and a contract for a "prototype and initial service vehicles" will be awarded next October.
Mr Hampson-Ghani said the order would be for "700 to 800 vehicles over a three-year period". TfL had been in talks with the Department for Transport and the EU, he said, and had reached tentative agreement that regulations do allow an open-platform bus. "We already have buses like that on the roads today."
It had been thought that the major manufacturers were lukewarm about the scheme. "If you speak to the manufacturers privately, they'll tell you that making a vehicle like that is no longer possible in this day and age," said Robert Jack, managing editor of Transit magazine.
However, both publicly and in private, Britain's two largest bus manufacturers expressed strong enthusiasm to the Standard. "TfL has been in contact and we are very interested," said a spokesman for Ballymena-based Wrightbus. Earlier this month TfL's head, Peter Hendy, visited the company's Northern Ireland plant to discuss the Routemaster and other projects.
"We are going to be all systems go. There is a solution there without a doubt," said a spokesman for Falkirk-based Alexander Dennis. "If London wants a Routemaster, we are going to be delighted to oblige." Chief executive Colin Robertson said his 80-strong engineering team was devoting increasing amounts of time to the project: "There is a good chance we could come up with a new design. We want to keep our top-dog position [in London] when it comes to the Routemaster."
The new Routemaster is almost certain to use a hybrid drive, where a diesel engine powers batteries which run the bus, making it dramatically cleaner than existing bendy and double-deck buses. A conventional hybrid double-decker will be unveiled by Alexander Dennis at the bus industry's main annual trade fair next month.
The order of up to 800 Routemasters is far more than needed to replace the bendy routes, which need 350 buses to operate them. It offers the prospect of being able to build the buses at a lower cost per unit than a smaller run.
If no major manufacturer is willing to make the buses, one industry expert said others could easily step forward. "Making a bus is not an expensive production-line job with robots and the like," says Hilton Holloway, news editor of Autocar magazine, which produced its own Routemaster design last year.
"Compared to volume cars it is crude a bit of a cottage industry, with a lot of fabrication. Some of the new Routemaster designs are pretty radical but the majors have been making buses the same way for a hundred years. They might not be the best people to do this."
Opposition members of the London Assembly have criticised the drive to introduce a new Routemaster. Val Shawcross, Labour chair of the assembly's transport committee, said the Mayor was "letting his personal prejudice override any sense of reason and should return the drawing board as soon as possible".
However, the new bus does appear to have caught the public imagination. Rukaiya Russell, a house music artist from New Cross, has released a track called Bring Back the Routemaster.
The rap includes the ding-ding of a Routemaster's bell and the shouting-out of all the RM route numbers swept away in Ken Livingstone's cull of 2003-5.
"Walking around central London one day, I just thought how I missed jumping on and off down Oxford Street, and I found myself singing 'Bring back the Routemaster'," says Russell on her MySpace site.
Reader views (19)
These would be laughable if they didn't cost so much. The original Routemaster was a design classic as it arose from the identified needs of bus passengers in the 1950s. The bendy buses and new double deckers are the result of what bus passengers in 2008/9 require. These designs are totally unsuitable so whatever comes out of this farce will look nothing like them. A bendy bus with a sticker on the front saying 'Routemaster 2009' would be cheaper and more useful.
- Ian Bartlett, Chesham, UK
To Mark at Bournemouth, at least two trolleybus options have been proposed as part of the competition and may be others of which I am unaware. As suggested in the article, 'the green flavour of the month' is still hybrids which despite the various misleading tags of 'electric' assigned to them by those promoting them are of course really simply diesels with electric transmission and a few traction batteries. They are neither environmentally friendly (in CO2 emission terms)nor friendly to persons on the street in terms of noxious emissions of particulates and NO gases. Even if they live up to all the claims for reduced fuel use (and many in North America are not!), they can only ever be a little bit less nasty than an odinary diesel. We did not know much about diesel emissions when London replaced the electric trams and trolleybuses with diesel buses between 1950 and 1962 and ultimately produced Routemaster 1 nor did we quite grasp how rapidly oil was beiung depleted and how much it would eventually cost. But we know now and to ignore what we now know and produce a vehicle for the next generation of London bus (Routemaster 2) which continues to destroy the environment, continues to produce heath affecting noxious fumes and continues to rely on a rapidly depleting fuel source which will very soon become prohibitively uneconomic to buy would seem to be the height of folly.
- Gordon Mackley, East Malling UK
I have anxiously been awaiting the results and the winner of this design competition.
Now that the American Presidential results have been announced and my uni assignment results were pleasing, I can only live in hope that London will be graced with a suitable new Routemaster, without too many changes from the good old icon's appearance.
- A British Born Aussie., A.C.T. Australia
The old Routmaster is one of the absolut most famous London picture for people outside UK and London. Dont take it away from the streets.
- Mats Olsson, Stockholm Sweden
"This bus will never be seen on the streets of London.It is just another example of the waffling nonsense that is Boris.
-Colin Barking, Essex"
I think it's shame that the mist of political views obscure what should be a sensible debate. Many people will see this as a good thing, let's give it a chance and se where it goes?
- Pierre-Of-Air, Londinium
Hello London,
I pray to god that any of these designs never get built. I have worked in the coach and bus building trade all my worling life and never never have I seen anything so UGLY.
The good old ROUTEMASTER was an ICON that is part of being British ..... Yes a bus, but not only a bus routemaster was number one.
My view is if you are going to replace it, keep the same shape and design but use modern engines for lower emissions, yes put in a disabled ramp, and make the saloons upper and lower more modern, but do not go down the path of making a Frankenstein monster on our London Streets ... Please?.
- John L.L, Scarborough N.Yks U.K.
Boris could bring the old Routemaster back as it didn't need to be phased out anyway until 2011. So Boris, please bring the beautiful old Routemasters back now and show the communists in power that our old ways will not be destroyed.
- Jane, london
What a complete and utter waste of money
- Mcw, London
I hope they get introduced soon. As I get older and fatter, I think my days of running down the road trying to grab the upright bar are limited, but I'd still like to try to see how late I can leave it without ending up as a panting ball of sweat in the road!
- George, Guildford
lets hope there is a better design for the new routemaster than those currently released! Nightmare so far.
Saying that the sooner we get rid of the bendy bus and I don't have to subsidise the huge volume of non paying passengers the better.
I better 90% of people on the 453 and 436 don't pay.
- Jc, se1
"How do they get round government regulations (and I mean our real government in Brussels, not the Punch and Judy show in Westminster) that outlawed the Routemaster on the basis of lack of universal disbled access and 'elf'n safety (due to open back)?"
Um, they build a low-floor one with a disabled space on it?
Now, value-for-money. 700-800 buses on the busiest routes, with conductors - that'll cost about £168m a year (since 540 of them to replace bendies was costed at £114m during the campaign - Boris claimed it was £8m, but he was talking rubbish).
Getting rid of bendies alone: £60m a year, although there's some of this that would also be part of the £168m, such as the cost of running more buses of smaller size. Let's call it £200m. Current bus subsidy: £659m a year.
So Boris has to fund about a 30% rise in bus subsidy during a recession with large sections of the public finances diverted to propping up his banker friends, or put the fares up for all of us.
Is this the worst value-for-money policy ever?
- Tom, London
We travelled on London Routemaster buses whilst on a holiday in 1998. There are no double decker, buses here in Canberra so it was a novelty and of course our boys led us to the seating upstairs. Enjoyable commuting indeed. Recently I have been made aware of the competition to bring them back, (I didn't even know they had been phased out)and have been following with interest various comments and some of the entries.
I am a little disappointed that I have only seen photos and details of 4 entries on the internet when I believe there are over 200. I actually read on a web site ( Dave Hill's London Blog, I think)that there were 700 entries.
Please unveil some more entries and expose a few more pictures before the winner is announced, which is the end of this month I believe. I have been priveleged to see an entry, which I can't seem to locate on the internet,and I think it deserves some publicity as it is by far the most asthetically pleasing compared to the 4 above. They seem to me, to come straight from a cartoon, 'Busy Buses' springs to mind. With all due respect to the designers of all the entries, each and every one of you deserve recognition and credit for your talent and hard work. May the best man win and I hope the public will be happy with the choice.
- Frances Jones, Canberra .Australia
I imagine when production versions of the new Routemaster begin to emerge it is likely that bus Operators in the provinces will consider them - the inevitable fashion driven affect.
But there remains one option that must in my opinion be considered, an all electric Routemaster with no engine at all.
The efficiencies and economies of operating modern trolleybuses on high frequency bus services is proven and unquestionable, then add in the zero exhaust benefits and it has so much going for it.
Even with a worst case power station source (oil/coal) the pollution created by a trolleybus is far less than the on street pollution from a diesel engine. With power sources such as hydro-electric stations you achieve virtually zero emmissions both at energy source and use.
On board compact secondary batteries enable modern trolleybuses to run away from the power supply, either in emergencies or often nowadays by design. E.G. Rome.
Complicated hybrid buses with very large limited life battery packs that will cost about £25k per bus every few years to replace may not be the best way forward. For 800 London RM buses that means £20,000,000 to equip -and re-equip on a regular basis. That is some 'carbon footprint'!
With trolleybuses the infrastructure costs are significantly less than for trams and of course they are as flexible as a bus in the street on their rubber tyres.
We need to get this right, a trolleybus Routemaster deserves, at the very least, serious consideration.
- Mark, Bournemouth England
This bus will never be seen on the streets of London.It is just another example of the waffling nonsense that is Boris.
- Colin, barking essex
Definitely good news, bendy buses are awful. Though isn't most of the reason why people love Routemasters the classic design? Hopefully they can keep the design as close to the original as possible and update the mechanics to make it more environmentally friendly.
- Debi, London
Anything to replace those awful bendy buses! And hopefully Boris will increase the fine for fare dodgers to £100 to help with the cost.
- Joannie, London, England
Cn't wait to see them back on the streets of London
- N Grinsell, London
We need hop on and hop off buses, but also conductors, and a disclaimer that anyone injured hopping on and hopping off will do so at their own risk. TfL cannot be held liable.
- Dhanraj, Basildon
I hope this happens.
But just one niggling thought. How do they get round government regulations (and I mean our real government in Brussels, not the Punch and Judy show in Westminster) that outlawed the Routemaster on the basis of lack of universal disbled access and 'elf'n safety (due to open back)?
- Johnse18, London
