please empty your brain below

18m artics are as manoeuvrable as 12m rigids.

A modern bus operating in the provinces at 12m has only 44 or 45 seats maximum owing to disabled regulations but is usually around 39-42. Compare this to an 11m bus before those regulations which could take 53 seats.

Londoners should not be surprised at vehicles with a high proportion of standing passengers. The high standee Red Arrows of old in the 1960s and 1970s were similarly designed though with a turnstyle system. They were unpopular.

Now, passengers will hate fewer seats and more standing.

Fare dodging on bendy buses was part myth though you are right, there’s really no change with the rigid Citaros compared to the artics.

The bus looks similar inside because of all the necessary disability regulation gubbins required.

I hope the film crews are there on Monday morning...

Ar3e you sure bendy buses are more dangerous to cyclists?

This bus seems inordinately long, and the back looks like it's going to swing out round corners.

Is the wheel base longer than a bendy? (i.e. distance between wheels compared to the distance between the bendy's front two sets of wheels)

Can someone explain just what is wrong with simply using double-deckers on these routes? They take up less road, with more room, there's enough space downstairs for people who can't climb stairs, and there's enough space upstairs for people who can to sit down. It seems to me the perfect solution for a crowded city. And yet, the powers that be seem willing to try out any other configuration than just putting in more double deckers ... clearly I'm missing something here.

Double deckers on the 507 would be totally impractical because of the high number of passengers using the service, most of whom are making short journeys.

Stairs are all very well and good on quieter routes, but on very-busy buses you end up with jam-packed lower decks... and spare seats upstairs that nobody can reach.

In terms of the wheelbase on an artic’s forward section and the rear overhang, in truth there’s little to choose between the two although the rear overhang on the rigid *is* longer.

Overall, manoeuvrability is pretty much the same on both.

London cannot argue that 12m buses are unsuited to its specific circumstances when these buses are just about everywhere these days, urban and rural.

Double decks actually have very few seats on the ground floor these days. The majority would need to mount the stairs. Loading and unloading times in relation to the short distance of the 507 mean a decker would struggle to keep time with all the to-ing and fro-ing.

The 507 has below-average fare evasion as a bendy, so that reason doesn't wash, either, let alone the continuation of multi-door boarding (the fare evasion is due to the way boarding is managed, not the bendy bit - putting a bend in does not mean greater fare evasion any more than it means more fires).

"these buses are just about everywhere these days"

12m single deckers are as rare as hen's teeth in London, though.

Actually, I'm still intrigued by the capacity - I understand it's officially 21 seated/76 standed, which is a greater proportion of standees than the bendy (49 seats/100 standing). Actually, TfL after some unpleasant experiences decided the modelling capacity of bendies is 120 and 12m SD as 70 (DD is 85, for comparison) both of which are substantially less than placarded.

Why is fare dodging on the 507 seen as a myth? I certainly never, ever paid my fair on the 507

@ Exit
Because most customers on the 507 appear to be commuters who have season tickets with their fare already paid, so to speak. The bus journey fare is added on to the season ticket.

"Why is fare dodging on the 507 seen as a myth? "

Because it's not connected with the type of bus, just with the means of boarding. Hence it's a myth that it's *bendies* that cause fare evasion, when it's a combination of specific routes and open boarding. Feel free to carry on boarding at the back door without paying on the 507.

As it happens, the 507 and 521 have lower than average fare evasion anyway.

And it is highly likely that there will not be enough new rigid buses for Monday's rush hour service so bendy buses will still run on the 507. So much for banishing whales to disused airfields in Leicestershire!

I think one of the bendy buses was being used as the Victoria Line rail replacement services yesterday.
So maybe they are not dead after all.

The reason they don't use double deckers is because there are some low bridges along the route that they can't go under I believe. Anyway, the red arrow routes are not going to matter much when it comes to fare evasion. The first real test is the 38.

The 521 also goes under the Strand Underpass hence is impossible to go double decker on that route. When unless they suddenly decided to re-route it round the Aldwych which is rather clogged up already.

And the 507 enters Waterloo Station via the taxi rank tunnel, so no double deckers on this route.

Gareth - the bendy bus (and all the other buses) I spotted on the Victoria Line replacement service yesterday was operated by Arriva, while the 507 is Go Ahead/London General. It's more likely to have been borrowed from the 29 or 38.

Stop me if I'm wrong, but more buses an hour means more traffic, and therefore more danger to cyclists not less. Exactly. And things that are perceived as dangerous are often actually not that dangerous because they are perceived as dangerous and therefore people are alert to the danger.

A few months back, the Northern Line rail replacement bus, running Colliers Wood to Stockwell, ran Go-Ahead bendy buses - probably from the 507 and 521.

Pedantic of Purley - of course the result of that is that people become more alert to the "danger" of completely the wrong things!

There's also a danger that other, er, dangers are overlooked - there were two deaths last year directly attributable to double decker design, for instance (a lady hit by a falling branch knocked off by one, a man thrown out of the top deck in the Croydon tram collision. Routemasters used to have a lot of deaths from the open back, of course).

In truth, the risk to any bus passenger from the bus design or any road user from a bus is miniscule, otherwise I'd get more worried about the fact that Boris thinks there's nothing wrong with telling the world that bendies are involved in 36\\% more collisions but blithely replacing them with more than 36\\% new buses. It's not like it's going to lead to a pile of dead cyclists, thank goodness.

The reason why the 507 is not using double deckers is because it shares its buses with the 521 (it obviously doesn't at the moment but will do again soon). The 521 travels through the Strand underpass during peak hours preventing it from being a double decker service.

Please note that the tunnel at Waterloo is tall enough for double deckers as the 211 travels through it.

Also, some of the 507 bendy buses were running on the rail replacement service yesterday as they said "Red Arrow London General" along the top of the bus (some even had no branding). I also saw 2 bendy buses traveling down Horseferry Road with "507 - Waterloo" on the display on Saturday. They had no passengers on them though!

Of course Boris has chosen a quieter week to introduce the buses. The school summer holiday has started. No school car runs - less traffic, no school children filling the bus to get to school and fewer commuters as many will be away on holiday.
TFL seem to want us to stand, as well as these replacement buses the new trains on the overground have more standing room, as will the new tube trains.

The 507 and 521 have always been standee services - before the bendy buses were introduced I used to watch the Red Arrow single deckers go round the Aldwych. Without fail they were insanely overcrowded.

It's a simple balancing act. Fewer seats equals more passengers overall.











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