Boris Johnson on his new London bus. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters
They travelled from afar, intent on devotion, bearing gifts of cameras, column inches and hyperbole. As one they worshiped the newborn, glowing ruddy in a humble corner of Trafalagar Square. There was no ox in attendance, though some believe the politician who sired the bus-child is an ass. I was among the host of media congregants bending the knee before his proud creation. Behold, Boris Johnson's new London bus has manifested in the capital.
Some dismiss the 11.2 metre long, three-doored, double-staircased, diesel-electric serial hybrid vehicle as a mere vanity project. Were it not the season of goodwill, I might be tempted to agree and, furthermore, dub the project emblematic of Boris' mayoralty as a whole. Yet I'm also confirmed in my view that it's a good addition to the London fleet.
Though each new bus will cost more than the hybrids already working London's streets - perhaps £330,000 compared with roughly £300,000 - manufacturers Wrightbus of Ballymena say that its fuel consumption is some 15% better. I like its back end and its sides and though not wholly enamoured of its front, find its interior a delight. The lights are subtle, the moquette rich and bold. The tech is impressive too. "See these bells?" enthused TfL surface transport chief Leon Daniels. "Completely wireless." The seats are installed with a view to easy floor-cleaning after vomit episodes. They've tried to think of everything.
Political opponents have slammed the £7.8 million paid to Wrightbus to develop the vehicle, but TfL says it will recoup that cost through royalties from future orders secured elsewhere. The sum is a tenth of that spent on setting up Boris's cycle hire scheme, which was recently reported to be on course to make £11 million less than hoped for this year. By comparison, the new bus looks good value for money. Should it have been spent instead on holding down public transport fares, which in January will rise by more than RPI inflation for the fourth consecutive year under Boris? Arguably yes, though delivering a "21st century" successor to the famous, defunct Routemaster was a major Boris manifesto pledge.
Two of the new buses will go into service in February on route number 38 between Victoria and Clapton Pond in Hackney (the latter end, thrillingly adjacent to my home). One of the project's leading lights explained that at first these will operate "in parallel" with the existing double deckers, and be joined by others as they come off the production line. There should be five by the end of March and once the sixth completes its journey across the Irish Sea they will start replacing the older models on the route. TfL's initial order is for eight.
There seems no doubt that new bus will continue attracting attention all the way up to mayoral election day May, though there must be a concern that not all of it will be of the right kind. Aside from its bespoke design and the elegance of its insides, the new bus is truly like a Routemaster only in reviving its open rear platform (though in practice this will often be closed off, and only open when a 21st century conductor is on board). Being free to hop on or off the bus at a time of their choosing rather than the driver's will be a bonus for many passengers, including me, though nostalgia tends to blind us to the feature's disadvantages.
My memories of the last days of the Routemaster aren't all fond. One is of one of my sons, then about 12 years old, arriving home quite shaken up having been shoved off the back of one by unseen assailants and landing in the middle of the road. Another is of following a Routemaster in my car down Islington's Essex Road watching three lads on bicycles competing recklessly to hitch a free ride by holding on to the open platform's upright pole while the conductor fretted helplessly.
Boris won't want his new bus to stop being the all-conquering good news story it has been all day. The whole of LBC radio's Nick Ferrari morning show was broadcast from inside or next to it as it posed at dawn next to City Hall. The new bus doesn't have a name. Ferrari called it "the first Boris Bus." Will the nickname stick? The Tory mayor isn't human if he isn't hoping so.
All previous installments of Boris's Bus (A Political Journey) are archived here.
From Cyclists in the City
From The London Word
Comments
16 December 2011 4:54PM
So far these buses cost more than £1.6m each.
16 December 2011 5:00PM
Instead of wasting money on new buses, Boris should force bus operators to clean buses properly between trips if he's serious about improving passenger experience.
It's a scandal that buses flooded with rubbish on the seats and floor are regularly allowed to leave bus terminals. Just how difficult is it to arrange to have rubbish on the bus cleared at least once for every trip it makes? It would just be a five minute job for the driver. Bus operators should be fined for allowing dirty buses to leave terminals.
16 December 2011 5:00PM
Pity he doesn't encourage TFL to engage with cyclists and keep to a minimum the numbers of dead cyclists on our streets in the future.He won't because they don't matter to him.
16 December 2011 5:04PM
So are health and saftey regs going to allow people to jump on and off when and where they please? Somehow I doubt it.
16 December 2011 5:07PM
Each Mayor seems determined to leave us with a duff Bus - firstly it was Ken's Bendy Busses (great for the streets of Cologne not so good on London's windy routes) and now The Boris Bus which seems to be trying to be all things at once. They could just have kept the Routemaster......
16 December 2011 5:09PM
Excellent journalism! Pithy too.
16 December 2011 5:14PM
What are they doing with all those almost-brand-new bendy buses, I want to know. As they are designed for driving on the left there aren't too many places they could be sold to.
16 December 2011 5:17PM
Berlin has had double decker buses with three doors and two staircases for many years.
16 December 2011 5:18PM
I drove the route master on the 73 while at college doing a post grad, not so long ago either. In fact just before they ditched them for bendies. Its the most boring job in the world and I was pretty hopeless but
didn't happen much at all.
If they are coming back the toughest job must be conductor! Londoners, you have amongst you some of the rudest people in the world and on balance most of them are black taxi drivers(the vehicle, not people moderator) When I hear tv or radio folk stating wot they eard from the cabbie on the ride to the studio, I LOL very hard.
The real tragedy for London Transport was Thatcher and the Tories. They sold off the buses and increased hours, lengthened routes, slashed pay and conditions for the staff. If your interested, seek out the profits made by the big four companies that have the contracts.It's job dropping.
AND FOR THE LAST TIME EVER...............
London buses are NOT obliged by law to stop and pick anyone up. It's purely on the discretion of the driver. Buses are private business not public property. If you don't like that, tough luck and thank Margaret H Thatcher.
Ting Ting.
16 December 2011 6:05PM
Heyone - the cleaning of buses is not down to the bus operators but down to the cleaning companies contracted by TfL. Hello, capitalism! Perhaps you should get a minimal wage job with one of them and find out for yourself.
Edman - you can only legally board or leave a bus when it is stationary at a bus stop, anything else is done at your own risk.
The bendy buses have redeployed by the bus companies to other locations, I believe Southampton, Leicester and Malta.
16 December 2011 6:21PM
How much money is going to be soaked up by having conductors on board, which these buses will need if the platform is to be left open?
It's all very well appreciating the bus' curves, its seating moquette or its nostalgic open platform. But there are more serious problems which Boris Johnson shows little interest in addressing, such as overcrowding. There's an example of this on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLGzh1_fF6o
Would the money being lavished on the new bus (its design, its purchase and its ongoing need for a second crew member), costs which will presumably have to be met from fares, not be better spent on improving bus services where they fail to meet passengers' needs?
16 December 2011 6:50PM
Dave, I can almost hear you grinding your teeth!
Let it go, it's just a bus!
16 December 2011 7:50PM
Well, I've been banging the drum for this - here at DaveHill - since I went to see Boris with the original proposal in December 2007.
First they said it couldn't be done.
Then it shouldn't.
But it's here. F**king great.
Now, nip over to this blog
http://www.autocar.co.uk/blogs/autocarconfidential/archive/2011/12/16/the-new-routemaster-bus-arrives-on-time.aspx
read the story and look at the picture with the old girl.
That's the election sealed, right there.
16 December 2011 7:55PM
kvlx387: "Just a bus"? Is there such a thing?
17 December 2011 4:34AM
People will be livid when, as I suspect, the back door will be firmly shut when the bus is between stops.
It a bus with three enrance/exit doors, just like a bendy.
If the back door is held open between stops It'll be interesting to see what a bus based PSCO does in the situation of somebody trying to get on whilst the bus is moving, as doing this is illegal:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/26
17 December 2011 10:59AM
It is amazing how rich, public school idiots such as Boris Johnson still figure in the political spectrum of UK poitics.
But then you remember that complete idiots such as Nadine Dorries, Jacob "Cream Crackers" Rees-Mogg, George Osborne, Michael Gove, Rory "Tory" Stewart, Zac Goldsmith, Louise Mensch et al were actually elected by voters.
There is something rotten in the heart of our democracy.
17 December 2011 11:50AM
Ah, the official, and dumb, labour party line enters the discussion early.
You only get that number by dividing the entire development cost by the number of buses created so far.
Are you stupid enough to think that each one of the six or seven thousand buses they'll eventually build will cost the same?
No, I don't think you are, but in a pathetic show of doublethink, you're not interested in the actual estimated cost-per-bus once they are being built in large numbers (which I think is around 300K, which isn't bad at all).
The only thing that makes you hate these buses is that it isn't ken's idea.
Can't you find something more substantial to criticise Boris for than a blooming bus that people seem to like and which will guarantee hundreds of jobs for a UK company for the next few years?
I notice that the bus is big news across the news and websites, everywhere but in the Guardian, which appears to be sulking so much that you have to dig deep to even find the story.
That alone indicates even the Guardian thinks it a winner, so wants to hide publicity as much as possible.
Pathetic!
18 December 2011 1:26AM
It is truly beautiful. Beautiful things are sometimes underrated, but they lift the spirit. I love it.
18 December 2011 9:04AM
Can anybody confirm or deny the story that Boris had to be restrained from driving the thing from City Hall to Trafalgar Square himself, claiming that as Mayor he had a "universal licence" to drive anything in London?
Shame they didn't let him go ahead, it would have been dead funny if a copper pulled him over and nicked him.
18 December 2011 11:26AM
Tech note: it's a series (not serial) hybrid - as opposed to a parallel hybrid.
In a series-hybrid system, the combustion engine drives an electric generator instead of directly driving the wheels. The generator provides power for the driving electric motors. In short, a series-hybrid is simple, the vehicle is driven by electric motors with a generator set providing the electric power - wikipedia
18 December 2011 12:24PM
I read this with horror on BBC "Transport spending skewed towards London - The government spends more money on transport projects for Londoners than on those for the rest of the country combined, a think tank says.
The Institute for Public Policy Research North says £2,700 is spent per person in London compared with £5 per head in the north-east of England."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16235349
19 December 2011 10:12AM
Boris
8 buses added to a fleet of 8000 on one route out of around 700 and a fares increase.
Ken
Fares reduction.
Which one do you think the average Londoner will vote for?
“TfL says it will recoup that cost through royalties from future orders secured elsewhere”.
Has Wrightbus received any enquiries from outside London? Whatever percentage TfL get they will have to sell an awful lot to recoup the money spent on development.
19 December 2011 3:48PM
I like this bus, and I do think that London (and other major cities) need a decent design led bus - but I'll not be voting for Boris just because of this - but it was a clear manifesto committment so you must expect him to push on with it.
However, I have this nasty feeling this will be a 'concorde project' - esp in terms of all the promises about who else will buy it - just like Concorde was going to be ordered by everyone but it never happened and the state owned airlines of the 2 building countries ended up with a handful of them built at a vast unit cost.
I liked Concorde too - I must say, could not afford the fares though.
A really nice clean, smart, well designed bus is one I'd pay a few pence more on the fare for - if you want to see the alternative though go to other places in the UK where you can ride clapped out, smelly, dirty and old buses (and not even at cheap fares)