LDN: 12m long single decks for TfL services

In recent years, the single deck bus of choice for TfL/london buses route contracts are the E200 darts- in 4 different sizes: 8.9, 9.3, 10.2, 10.8m long.

However, some recent awards by London Buses specified longer- 12m long buses.

London United/RATP chose two different types for service on 2 routes based at Hounslow garage- AV: Tempos for route H37 and citaros for route 203.

Other, existing 12m long buses are Scania Omnicities [on routes 293 358 X26 operated by Metrobus] and the experimental Hydrogen buses -operated by First on route RV1.

Route 227 was won recently by Stagecoach - specifying 12m long vehicles. Usually Stagecoach in London prefer to buy ADL products - so it remains to be seen if we might see E300 dual door red buses in London...

Here are the latest-
Tempo on route H37 seen at Richmond, and Citaro seen at Hounslow.
for the sake of completemess, here are the other two major 12m vehice types:
WSH62995 on route RV1 and scania 561 from Metrobus 'special working' on route T32.

in case you are wondering- yes, the red colour used on the citaros is a bit 'orange'!

regards

Yoram