[GB] London - Goodbye 38 bendibus

follow~~~~~~

一個單大約45分鐘至80分鐘或更多...視乎非繁時/繁時時段或路面情況

令外,我諗一定唔會全日出哂72架車,亦應該話唔會真係有足72架車做[掛牌車],
以現時48架車來計,班次已經好密...好多時都會拖卡...
你話繁時出72架車都講得過,但其他時間需要出哂72架車就好似唔太需要....


*多謝上面的師兄提醒仲有18和n29...小弟一時間醒唔起..

原帖由 norrislaw 於 2009-11-13 03:08 發表


Hi NV58,

Tks for your information, it is sad to see the bendis are leaving 38 tomorrow. Replacing 48 bendis by 72 DD certainly not a clever thing to do in terms of operation and creating more traff ...

I don't personally. The 38, in my opinion, is one of the services which shouldn't have been converted in the first place. It is busy, but all the places it goes pass can hardly accommodate a bus of that size, let alone 48 of those on the service.

I agree the 50% increase of peak vehicle requirement is a bit silly. The folks in London Buses must be looking at the capacity of a decker and a bendi and just do a quick sum. I'm looking forward to the 73 getting converted now, that service has 55(!) buses as peak requirement.

Seems like NV58 has quite a strong personal view about them.
Don't take it personal, you live more than 200 miles away.
May I ask you  when was the last time you caught the 38?
What bus they put on that route,
does it really have a big effect on you?

原帖由 ME 於 2009-11-14 11:41 發表
Seems like NV58 has quite a strong personal view about them.
Don't take it personal, you live more than 200 miles away.
May I ask you  when was the last time you caught the 38?
What bus they put on th ...

Thanks. Though I am no longer residing in London, I live there long even and, since then I have been in London frequent enough as well. And mind you, I am fairly close to a few people in the scene and industry in London to understand some operational issues from them, and make an objective view on the issue, rather than just sitting on my favourite bus and blindly admiring them. The problem I am talking about, if you are actually understanding it over the years, would be the same whether the bendibus is a Citaro G, or a Volvo, or a Scania, or a StreetCar.

Going back to the topic. The 38 is certainly a busy service, but as I said, the places it go through is hardly suitable to operate a type which take up so much space on the road, for a simple reason - for most of the places the 38 get pass, there isn't a lot of space on the road for them. The problem is very obvious to anyone who have used the 38 to go as far as Hackney, and between there and Islington the traffic is so heavy that time-keeping become a major issue, and slows down everything behind them. Back to the days when it was RML-operated - which is a shorter bus of course, and the traffic was not as bad as well - the situation is already bad enough. Putting something twice as long into places where traffic is already saturated (but still growing) wouldn't help much, would it?

This problem does not only affect the 38, and some of the bendi-routes as well. And if I'm being honest, out of all the routes which got bendibus I really don't think the 12, 29, 436 should have stuck with double deckers in the first place. Yes they are busy, but the issue is the same as the 38 - the roads they get pass simply can't take them. And of course, now London Buses wants to remedy the situation by putting 50% more buses whilst converting them back to double deck-operations, which defeats the argument as well... And to be honest, I don't think the folks in London Buses were thinking it through, really.

I am not a hardcore objector of bendibus in London - I still think the Red Arrows should have stayed with the bendibuses. For the remaining services, the 25, 149 and 207 (and the 18 probably) as well. There is no denial that bendibuses are suitable in some of the services, but certainly not all of the existing ones.

one more................

I went a presentation by Peter Handy, TfL Commissioner few weeks ago. Someone did asked the same question, and the answer was that TfL would review the situation after certain time and would decide on the appropriate frequency in the long run.  

Bear in mind that revised TfL Business Plan identify that there would be a slight reduction in operating milage in the London Bus Network for cost saving purpose.

pics to follow

I actually live near Oxford Circus, and I use/used artics daily on their routes 12 25 38 73 453 and even 18- all within less than a mile from my home.  I can count the 149 as a route I see fairly often as well.
The same used to apply to red arrow routes 507 an 521.

Sadly, the operation of articulated buses became a hot political issue; the way they were introduced [400 in a very short time span of 2 years] and the way they are to be withdrawn so quickly suggests lack of thought and planning and a heavy hand of political intervention.

It is rather sad to hear a new Mayor of London campaigning on what type of buses would be allocated to a specific route. How petty and unworthy.

The introduction of bendybuses on the 38 had a heavy cost- not only the cost of leasing those buses for 5 years only [they have a shelf life of 15 years, and most of the costs were loaded onto the first 5 years], but at least GBP10m =HKD150m was spent on a long programme of road improvements and bus stops.The programme is just about to end- with Piccadilly- after route 38 lost it's bendybuses.

So, if you take account of all the costs- creating a bus garage in Lea Valley [which will close when the 149 & 73 looses it's artics], the road improvement and the huge cost of the lease or purchasing buses for use of between 33 and 45% of their shelf life, you can see that the whole business was handled in a very bad way, and the fault of the huge waste of public money clearly belong to the politicians.

You can see that I refer to the decision on which routes were converted , and the hasty and economically unjustified decision to get rid of them regardless of economic costs or logic.

NV58- I know you used to live in London, but since you left London, quite a lot have changed. Population growth and regeneration of inner London [zones 1 to 3] has seen a very large increase in public transport usage. Most of the new people use public transport to get to work, hence the newly founded popularity of the buses. The introduction of the artic buses was a partial answer to the increase in ridership.
i would suggest you take a ride on the 38 between the Angle and Hackney and see for yourself the beneficial effects of regeneration of what used to be a neglected area. It looks much better now, with lots of new people. it is a positive development!

Articulated buses certainly had a role to play in London, and were very useful in ferrying large number of passengers. Many a times did I witness a breakdown on the tube service, when hoards of people were cleared off bus stops by articulated buses who could compress 149 people into one. In central London, not much will happen to underground capacity issues till 2017 when Crossrail will be completed.

So, I am trying to put the operation of articulated buses in the context of politics - which had not much to do with logic or reason or operational reasons. And I rest most of the blame here on irresponsible waste of public money at the door of the Mayor of London.

One last comment:
When route 38 lost its routemasters. 50 RM/Ls were allocated; those were replaced by 47 articulated buses, and those were replaced by 70 double deck buses- a massive increase, which did not solve the alleged problem of the artics taking too much space on the road.

Routes 507 & 521: 30 artics were replaced by 50 rigid single deck mercedes. Those tend to travel in packs of 2 or three buses....

although the tender result for route 149 sees 30 artics replaced by 35 d/d buses, this is supposed to be connected with a programme of route changes [route 349 is often mentioned], so we will have to wait and see till mid 2011 to see the full impact of route changes.


Regards

Yoram

原帖由 yblumann 於 2009-11-29 18:03 發表
I actually live near Oxford Circus, and I use/used artics daily on their routes 12 25 38 73 453 and even 18- all within less than a mile from my home.  I can count the 149 as a route I see fairly ofte ...

It is seen quite a number of Central London routes are
operating every 5-6 minutes or even more frequent
during the day time, while I just wonder is there such a huge
demand during day time while most of the lads should
be in the office. While in Hong Kong, most buses are
running much less frequent in the noon and afternoonand there are much more high rise buildings here.