‘Bendy’ buses due to go west within year

28 July 2008

The first articulated ‘bendy’ buses will be taken off London routes from June next year, Transport for London announced this week.

TfL will ask operators to bid to run the routes with double-deckers instead, but is still unsure about the cost involved. It appeared before the London Assembly as part of a meeting to establish how mayor Boris Johnson’s election pledges could be carried out.

One of his key messages was the replacement of bendy buses with routemasters. TfL has launched a competition to find a new design for a routemaster-type bus, but it will not be ready for when the first bendy buses come off the roads next year.

Peter Hendy, TfL commissioner, said that as part of their bids, operators would also be asked to submit the expected costs as if they were to run the route with an articulated bus, as this would allow it to make a cost comparison between the two.

He promised that capacity on the routes, the first three being the 537, the 501 and the 38, would not be reduced by the change. At the meeting, the assembly questioned the amount TfL was spending on external consultants.

Hendy said many of these were engineering consultants required for carrying out construction work, and that although he would like to have some of them on the books, it would be ‘hugely’ uneconomical to retain some of the more specialist consultants in-house.

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‘Bendy’ buses due to go west within year

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