Yes the New Routemaster is getting small,. |
The
London Bus Club has produced an exclusive report on the short New Routemaster
bus which is manufactured by Wrightbus and has a reduced length of around 10.1
metres. This news comes in as a surprise.
From
the London Bus Club
Yesterday,
our columnist (TfL Managing Director of Surface Transport) Leon Daniels visited
Wrightbus at Ballymena to view LT806. This is actually the prototype for a
shorter version of Wright's NRM. It has had a whole bay of seats taken out
reducing it's length to around 10.1 metres. Incredibly, due to the weight
saving from less glass and metal being used, this shorter model will be able to
carry 87 people, more than the existing type!
We
have posted a photo of the interior in the gallery section.
The
lead photo shows Leon with LT806. (Which you can
view in their article on London Bus Club.)
As I have seen in the
photo, there are no window openings and the shorter spec has a reduction of
eight seats. Yes, just eight seats in order to reduce size and weight to
achieve capacity of 87 passengers, whereas the original 11.3 metre length New
Routemaster had variable unladen weight, depending on the batch and carries
less than 87 passengers.
The Short New
Routemaster is 10.1 metres which is smaller than the average sized double deck
bus in London. It's also smaller than the Enviro 400H City which has a length
of 10.4 metres.
This reminds me of the
original AEC Routemaster project when they extended the RM by adding the 2ft
4in bay in the centre of the body which became instantly recognisable by the
square window; this bus was known as the RML. The RM had a seating capacity of
64 and was 27.5 feet (8.4 m) in length, whilst the RML had a seating capacity
of 72 and a length of 29.91 feet (9.12 m). The New Routemaster project simply has a
downgrade of seating capacity where the original length had 62 seats whilst the
new short length only has 54.
I
think that the Short New Routemaster may run on routes which failed their route conversion test.
Anyway,
some other news relating to the New Routemaster…
Extracts
from London Bus Enthusiast
07/12/2015
Today
marks the first day of the new HA type
buses on route 78 from Arriva's Ash Grove Garage.
Over
the course of the next few months there will be further transfers with the
delivery of new LT-class buses to
Brixton for route 59 and the planned transfer there of route 417.
02/12/2015
The 149 conversion to
NBFL operation is almost complete, this has allowed a total of 6 batches of buses to be
ousted from Tottenham garage.
Onto
a brief spell about Metroline, route 307
is set to be operated by Enviro 400 buses, possibly from those at
Cricklewood from the 168 conversion to
NBFL.
London
Sovereign, will get route 139 which will be rerouted with the 13 due to the
planned Finchley Road changes will which take effect soon, we are unable to
confirm a date for this, the 13 will be history with the 139 taking its place at London Sovereign with NBFL.
The
140 & 182 are expected to be retain, with the 140 taking on brand new Volvo
Hybrids partly funded by BAA or Heathrow which presses from Greener Cleaner
Buses around the Airport the 182 is set to taking existing Volvos from Holloway
when the 91 converts to NBFL.
Remember,
you can follow me on Twitter, Tumblr,
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is @CLondoner92
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Image attribution
"Metroline bus LT13 (LTZ 1013), route 24, 22 June 2013" by LawrenceAbel. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Metroline_bus_LT13_(LTZ_1013),_route_24,_22_June_2013.jpg#/media/File:Metroline_bus_LT13_(LTZ_1013),_route_24,_22_June_2013.jpg