please empty your brain below

Its not just ambient temperature that can affect the heat inside.

A full bus has a ready made heat source in there of all the passengers who are about 38degC each.

In addition, there will be solar gain from the sun coming through the windows. (Like a greenhouse.)

Therefore, not being able to open a window is a big issue, especially when the air outside is cool enough to have a serious effect on the temperature inside. (From your statistics 95% of the time)
Not only hot upstairs but also little leg room between the harder seats, a low ceiling and gloomy decor. I shall avoid these buses in future.
The old Routemasters always seemed more comfortable in the hot weather. They had proper windows that wound down out of the way, not tilted so air circulated across the ceiling and out the other side, and an open back, creating a natural air-con. Simple things that worked and no need for expensive cooling units. Bus designers seem to miss the obvious.
For completeness, what was your thermometer reading on the S stock?
It was only 20C outside when my thermometer registered 29.9C on route 24 - not an unusual temperature for a London summer. You're right, the breeze makes all the difference. When I took my thermometer out again on Monday this week the temperature on the New Bus For London was higher than that of an elderly diesel on the 172 with its heating on. Something seriously wrong there.
@Steve "Bus designers seem to miss the obvious" - Heatherwick Studios aren't bus designers. Maybe that's tbe problem?
I understand the NB4L has an air cooling system rather than air conditioning. It certainly does not have the same type of refrigerant based system that (UK built) buses in the Far East have - they are really chilly inside on hot and humid days.
When introduced the D-stocks also had no opening windows. After complaints
about the excessive heat on them, they were retro-fitted with opening windows
(and with some of the double glazing changed to single). Doubt this would
be possible with a bus, but you’d have thought they might have learned
from this
The breeze is the most important thing. It's one reason why I dislike car air-con. I'd much rather have the window open, even if the result is a slightly warmer car.

There's this strange obsession with aircon (or air-cooling) these days but putting it on a bus that isn't ever (during the day) going to be a sealed unit for any of the time was just plain stupid. It reeks of a bus spec'd by an idiot. And given the key features of the bus are an open platform that simply harks back to nostalgia than being anything useful, we can assume the aircon element was directly specified by Boris. Because, after all, it sounds good.

Of course the Routemasters had airflow helped by openable windows at the front as well as sides. Shame some idiots meant those windows were sealed later.
IIRC, the European Union now requires the installation of aircon on new trains. Might it be that they require it on buses too?
No such problem on the penultimate X53 from Seaton to Lyme Regis yesterday evening. The two of us had the top deck to ourselves, the most beautiful bus journey I had ever been on.
"that they was using postcards" ?

Is this another of DG's writing styles, or just a grammatical error?

dg writes: the latter, thanks.
Actually pretty much all London double deckers introduced since around 2006 have had air cooling systems fitted (look for a humming box above the stairs for a clue).

The problem is that they still have opening windows, and as everyone's instinct appears to be to fling them open, that lovely cool air gets pumped straight back out into the street.

When they're shut, however, it's marvellous. Quite what they've done with the Boris Bus system, I'm not sure.
21st century Londoners deserve better.
Have the people who designed the NB4L ever travelled on buses in a hot overcrowded city? What sort of testing did the vehicle undergo? I like the design of the bus...but looks are not everything, we all know that.
It's a perfect example of someone going "I can design a bus better than the bus designers can!"

and then finding out... they... were... wrong.
"Comfortableness"

surely the last three syllables (eight letters) of that word are redundant?

I think the heat's getting to your writing style: you have my sympathy - the first (and, thankfully, so far only) time I have traveled on one of Boris's great bloated, overweight, gloomy, noisy dinosaurs was in March, and it was too hot then!

Lorenzo: Seaton? Visit to the tramway, perhaps?
DG: The postcards they had were sent to everyone who lives on the 24 Route. I've got a set myself. TfL funded PR exercise for Boris's pet project.
Perhaps they should use them to send complaints to the Mayor's Office, TfL, their GLA member, London Travelwatch the Evening Standard, and Heatherwicks (who I understand are experienced cauldron designers, as they did the Olympic one as well as those now plying the No 24!)

(And if the stamps didn't stick properly in the heat, Boris's office will have to pay the postage due!)
@Moogal - "The problem is that they still have opening windows"

Yes, this is very annoying - e.g. on the 205.

By the way, when was it announced that passengers may exit buses from the front doors if they can't be bothered walking to the back doors? This seems to have become the norm over the last year or so.
The only time I've seen passengers exit buses from the front doors is when the bus is incredibly busy and people are stood right next to the driver. Done it myself a few times. What's the point of fighting your way down the bus when there's a door right next to you?

The other time I had to do it was when Abelio sent a completely knackered looking single doored single decker on a route near me. It reminded me of when I first lived in Ealing in 1999 and Armchair ran the 65 bus with single door double deckers. Every bus stop was torture!
AndrewWS I find the idea that the EU insists on air-con very, very hard to believe. There's certainly no such requirement for trams.
Not a surprise that NBfL (how long will they remain 'new? And they aren't 'Routemasters' by name nor design - please leave that misnomer to ignorami media) upper decks are sauna experiences. 'We' learned that in 1967 when the prototype (real) Routemaster with a front entrance was built in the same upper-deck fashion.

Except, technology of the day permitting, that bus (designated 'FRM1' and now resident in the London Transport Museum annexe at Ealing) caught fire as a direct result of forced air ventilation etc. It had to be rebuilt, plus opening windows on both decks installed.

As another contributor noted, same with the Underground's D-stock for the District Line... S-stock trains should avoid this sauna experience as they were designed by people who understood trains and people. Tube trains have had mixed outcomes in terms of saloon ambient temperatures - in tube tunnels more depends on external ventilation than train-borne kit.
@Andrew - Unfortunately we didn't visit the tramway. The reason for our visit to Seaton was the coastal walk from Lyme Regis, which I did with my 9 year old son. We did visit the exceedingly good fish and chip shop though (full marks). What a beautiful part of the country, would love to go back some time.
I think you might find a thermometer that displays both temperature and relative humidity helpful. A temperature of 33 degrees with a relative humidity of 50% is tolerable. It's HELL if the humidity is 95% because sweat won't evaporate and cool you. I think Maplin sell suitable gadgets quite cheaply.
Even if the heat issue is sorted, the bus design is still poor from a disability access issue for a few reasons.

The white-on-black destination blind might be pleasingly retro, but it's less visible to visually impaired people than yellow on black - and TFL's guidance recommends yellow on black for this reason.

The highly reflective front also makes it hard for visually impaired people.

The wheelchair user's space has very poorly sited poles making it awkward to get into, and impossible for some larger powerchair users.

These are design points that older buses (including the bendybus) got right - Johnson, and Hetherwick, have made active choices that are *worse* for disabled people than existing stock.
Well said Helen - you beat me to it with the Rh detail. With the latent heat of evaporation of water exceeding 2000Kj per Kg we have the essence of how life keeps going on earth evaporating water cools things down - a visit to St Georges Cross on Glasgow Subway will affirm that a bubbling stream of groundwater and gentle airflow creates a bright and fresh ambience in such a space.

For a/c it is also very helpful the make sure that condenser in the coolant circuit can actually dump the heat of the compressed coolant out to wherever you are trying to dump it, so that cooled down liquid is fed back in to the evaporator where it takes the heat away. If the condenser has blocked (or restricted capacity for) airflow, or refridgerant levels are low the system is also going to struggle. Of course this is a clear reason why deep level tube trains cannot have air conditioning as the only place to dump the heat is right in the same tunnel as the train you are trying to cool down.

There are other ways to cool things down, indeed the 1849 house I'm in now has air conditioning, not dissimilar to that fitted for centuries in many Arabian houses, by clever use of natural airflow. Similarly on an aircraft the heat taken in when a feed of compressed air (from the turbo-fan by-pass bleed) is fed out to 'atmospheric pressure' through a diffuser nozzle, and cools the cabin. You'll notice the same effect when 'feeling' for a puncture in a bike tyre - the pumping up of air pressure generates heat, and the release of that pressure cools things down.

Comfort can also be enhanced by reducing the humidity, through drying the air or replacing the wetter air with fresh dryer air. Cooling the air also helps as cold air holds less water vapour, and hence an air conditioning system needs to have a water collecting and drainage system or you get the ideal conditions for legionnaires disease.

In some ways the overheated spaces in our built environment could be dealt with by installing natural air conditioning systems, where a huge volume of water is being vapourised, COx and NOx are being processed to increase the level of O2, and dust and fine particles (ie PM10) are being filtered out by the exposed areas of the evaporation system. The great additional benefit of this natural air conditioning is that it also attenuates the run-off from rainfall, easing the load on storm drainage and potential for flash flooding.

We can address some of this by re-working some of the serious hard landscaping which exists or being planned (the bare expanses of stone and tarmac around the new King's Cross for example), and perhaps even bringing a few watercouses to the surface (as that bauchle outside One London, and the fountains that drain in to it)

Now anyone care to fund my plan for cooling down the Tube?
So... Boris's big idea turns out to be full of hot air.

No surprises there, then.
I travelled on an empty top deck on the hottest day of the year to date (22 July) and it was perfectly acceptable; if one sat under on e of the air blowers really quite cool.










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