Today
is the 25th December 2015, Christmas day, so I hope you
all enjoy it, eat plenty of festive food and enjoy a Christmas tipple to
celebrate with your family and friends.
Unfortunately
there are no London Transport services today so for those that need to travel I
hope you have made prior arrangments. There are other transport services around
the world such as the New York City MTA which operate their Sunday
service on Christmas day.
Below
is a short reminder of some of my previous articles that I wrote this year.
·
The tale of the 'open boarding buses' (Bendy Bus and New Routemaster)
·
2 New Electric buses for London (for routes 507
& 521)
During 2015 we have
seen a few changes to the London Bus services, one of these is the new rear
door modification for the New Routemaster buses manufactured by Wrightbus. This
means the New Routemaster has officially evolved to a permanent 3 door 2
staircase bus because TFL dropped the purpose design of having an open platform
at the rear, but at least a small number of routes operate with a rear
platform. Recently we have seen a new shorter New Routemaster design which has
a length of 10.1 metres and a reduction of 8 seats. We've also seen a
breakthrough of over 600 New Routemaster buses as TFL originally planned to
roll out.
We have seen a small
increase of electric buses for routes 507, 521 and 108 and a major increase for
route 312 with Optare Metrocity electric buses. Plus we have seen the unveiling
of the Double Deck electric bus manufactured by BYD and the Alexander Dennis
Enviro 400H City with designs based from the New Routemaster bus for route 78
and the Alexander Dennis Enviro 400H Virtual Electric for route 69.
We have also seen TFL
Rail taking over the Shenfield line which had previously been operated by
Abellio Greater Anglia. Also, London Overground have taken over the Romford To
Upminster and Lea Valley Lines from Abellio Greater Anglia as well.
I'm
also pleased to inform you that some of my articles have been linked to by a
couple of media outlets and organisations:
The Guardian (the word ‘modified’ links to my article)
Many
thanks to those who have linked to my articles, including any I may have
missed.
I'm looking forward to
2016 as we will probably see more electric buses for London, plus we may see
the D Stock train finally withdrawing from the District Line service in favour
of the new S Stock trains.
Also, who will take
over the operations of the London Overground? as LOROL (Arriva & MTR)
contract ends by 14th November 2016. Not to
mention the Mayoral and London Assembly Elections in May 2016; who will take
over the vacant position from Boris Johnson? and what new Transport policies
will be implemented for London Transport services? I'm obviously keen to know
about policies dealing with London’s pollution and air quality which in turn
contributes to climate change.
The Summer brought us
the good news that Routes 507 and 521 will be fully converted to single deck
electric buses by autumn next year, lowering carbon emissions and helping to
improve London's air quality. Some bad news though which I have to mention is
in regard to the fare rises on 2nd January 2016.
Times always change,
especially with technology and the rate in which it is advancing. We live in
the age of the Internet now which makes it a lot easier to document events.
Social Media has made it easier for commuters to document their experience with
public transport which in turn brings awareness to others online. The bus
designs have changed too as the New Routemaster has encouraged bus manufactures
like Alexander Dennis to feature the new iconic
glazed staircase in their design. Hopefully in a few years time we will see
more zero emission buses doing their part in helping to combat Climate Change
and diesel emissions in London.
We
live in interesting times for transport and it will get more interesting as
time progresses.
Follow
me on social media for all the latest transport related updates. I am on Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Google Plus which is @CLondoner92
I'll
finish off by featuring various transport videos which I filmed during 2015 and
most importantly, Merry Christmas and
Happy New Year to my readers and followers. Thank you for reading my
website and I'll continue to keep you all informed as we roll in to 2016 and
beyond.