Tuesday 5 December 2023

London Bus Tender Awards: Arriva Wins Contract To Operate Superloop SL5 and Metroline Retains Route U4 With New Double-Deck Electric Buses

As we are in December 2023, the latest London Bus tender awards have revealed that Arriva London has won the Superloop Route SL5 contract with existing single-deck diesel buses, and Metroline won Route U4 with new double-deck electric buses.

LBSL intends to enter into new contracts for the following routes with the operators listed below:

Route

Current Operator

New Operator

PVR

Vehicles

627

Arriva London South

Arriva London South

3

Existing hybrid double deck

661

Stagecoach Selkent

Stagecoach Selkent

1

Existing diesel double deck

SL5

n/a – new route

Arriva London South

10

Existing diesel single deck

U4

Metroline West

Metroline West

12

New electric double deck


New electric vehicles may enter service after the contract start date, dependent on infrastructure and/ or vehicle delivery timescales.

The diesel and hybrid vehicles detailed above will meet Euro VI emissions standards.

The start and end dates for the above contracts are detailed in the following table:


Route

Contract Start Date

Contract End Date

627

2nd November 2024

1st November 2030

661

5th October 2024

1st October 2027

SL5

3rd February 2024

11th April 2025

U4

26th October 2024

24th October 2031

It's good to see the rollout of the electric buses continue, as route U4 will be using new double-deck electric buses by late next year (2024).

As the new tenders reveal that the Superloop route SL5 will be using existing single-deck diesel buses. I've taken a read through the consultation report and tweeted various pages on Twitter/X. It reveals there are 265 comments for "Suggestion to use New Routemasters/electric vehicles - improving design/accessibility of buses". It seems that the people who took part in the consultation have requested that TfL use New Routemasters or double-deck electric buses, but instead TfL and the contracted bus operator Arriva will use single-deck diesel buses.

As this is another London Bus Tender Awards article, I will show you the highlights of my tweets from last month on Twitter/X.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter/X by searching for @CLondoner92 or by clicking on the direct link to my Twitter/X page here. I'm also on BlueSky and Mastodon.

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