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| First of these entered service on route 24 |
First of all, I'd like
to wish all my readers and followers a very Happy New Year. 2016 is the 10th anniversary of the Alexander Dennis Enviro400 in London bus service. Please note, I do
not know much about the Enviro400, if I miss anything important out then please
let me know in the comments section below. This article is mostly aimed at the
Enviro400 operation in London.
They first started
operation on route 24 where their new contract for Metroline started on 3rd of January 2006 from Holloway (HT) garage,
with the first batch of 28 Enviro400’s in service. Shortly afterwards a
demonstrator named "Spirit of London" was delivered to Stagecoach
London to replace the ALX400 Dennis Trident which was destroyed during the 7th July 2005 London bombings. The Spirit of London was unveiled on 3 October 2005 as it was a first brand new design by Alexander Dennis.
Here is the TFL press
release of the “Spirit of London” bus
from 24th January 2006.
New bus shows Spirit
of London
A
new bus named Spirit of London starts work today from Stratford Garage.
It
is one of the first of a new generation of British designed and built
double-deckers.
The
new bus provides extra seats, increasing the number available on the lower deck
to 30. There is also a wider entrance than usual and more space for passengers
using wheelchairs or with pushchairs. It is also fitted with all of the equipment
now required as standard on all new London buses, including low-floor,
step-free layout on the lower deck, on-board CCTV, tinted glass, automatic
heating system, wheelchair ramp, front 'kneeling' system and Euro III engine.
This
particular vehicle is also fitted, as a trial, with an advanced upper deck
air-cooling system.
This
new design of bus also operates on route 24, operated by Metroline.
·
The
new vehicle will operate on a number of routes from Stagecoach in London's
Stratford garage, including the Number
30 between Marble Arch and Hackney Wick.
·
Spirit
of London is a Dennis Trident fitted with Alexander Dennis Limited's (ADL) new
Enviro 400 bodywork.
Currently, the ‘Spirit
of London’ bus operates from Rainham (RM) Garage on various routes operated by
Stagecoach. The Enviro400 has sold successfully in London with a number of
operators, such as Travel London (now
known as Abellio London) and Go Ahead
London General (which received the first Euro IV-engined Enviro400 in May
2006), operating these buses.
During 2008, 12
prototypes of the Enviro400H (Hybrid) were rolled out to various operating
companies to trial on their key routes. The trial proved to be a success hence
the reason the bus operating companies increased the Enviro400H fleet.
Moving on towards May
2014, Alexander Dennis announced the current generation known as the Enviro400
MMC. This bus has gained interest amongst operators as they have ordered the
Enviro400 MMC for their new contracts. Most of them are hybrids and some of them
have the Volvo B5LH Chassis.
Below is a quick list
of the routes the Enviro400 MMC design operates on.
Route
|
Type
|
Operator
|
Garage
|
69
|
ZeEUS
|
Tower
Transit
|
LI
|
109
|
E40H
|
Abellio
|
BC
|
135
|
Volvo
B5LH
|
Go
Ahead
|
SI
|
177
|
Volvo
B5LH
|
Stagecoach
|
PD
|
332
|
E40H
|
Metroline
|
W
|
350
|
E40H
|
Abellio
|
WS
|
415
|
E40H
|
Abellio
|
WL
|
498
|
E40D
|
Stagecoach
|
NS
|
The above information
is taken from London Bus Routes Operational Details page.
Please note, ZeEUS is
a Enviro400H Virtual Electric which
is a battery powered double deck bus that uses the diesel hybrid system during
part of the operation. I have already written an article about it which you can
see here.
Route 498 is the only route which operates the standard diesel version
of the Enviro400 MMC.
You can see more on
the Enviro400H City in an article I wrote back in September. The design
of the bus looks similar to the New Routemaster as Alexander Dennis is aiming
the bus type at the London market which makes it competitive to the New
Routemaster bus manufactured by Wrightbus. Currently the bus is still rolling
out for route 78 and Arriva London are the first to operate these buses. The
next route will be route 26 where they will enter service on 25th June 2016; they will be operated by CT Plus.
Lastly, Arriva Kent Thameside has ordered 31 of
the Enviro400's which feature the original design. I personally think that this
will be the last newest batch of this type. I've already mentioned this news in
this article here. You can read about it in the last
part of the article.
Below you can see
video footage of the Alexander Dennis Enviro400 bus which I've taken over the
last few years.
Lastly of course,
please follow me on Twitter, Tumblr,
Pinterest and Google plus for all
the latest news and updates at @CLondoner92
Once again, a very
Happy New Year to all my readers and followers.
Image attributions
"South End Green Terminus - geograph.org.uk - 560454" by Martin Addison. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:South_End_Green_Terminus_-_geograph.org.uk_-_560454.jpg#/media/File:South_End_Green_Terminus_-_geograph.org.uk_-_560454.jpg
"Enviro400-VE-VirtualElectricRte69-P1370183" by Spsmiler - Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enviro400-VE-VirtualElectricRte69-P1370183.JPG#/media/File:Enviro400-VE-VirtualElectricRte69-P1370183.JPG
