Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Boris' new Routemaster designs unveiled
Here are TFLs pages on the new designs and runners up
Tags for Forum Posts: TfL, buses, public, routemaster, transport
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Don't you think, Steve, that you might be just a teensy bit unfair?
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Alan a clever photo montage, but not wholly an improvement on the new bus. Are these perhaps the most stylish buses in the world?
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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haha Alan .. nope, I don't think I'm being unfair about the bus, or come to think of it, Ally Pally either.. I never liked it much anyway..as I said, it's a nice backdrop for the borough.. but that's about it - apart from the park of course..
All Evan Davies could say about the bus when asked by Humphreys after the interview was that 'it was clean'.. Now does that say something about the new bus or London's transport in general...?
Most other operators of Hybrid tech. buses will tell you that their vehicles spend more time being serviced than on the road.. and cost double to run (and that without using conductors as well) so let's wait and see how these new ones do..
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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And Evan Davis talks to the designer Thomas Heatherwick. Route 38 Victoria to Clapton from Monday (27th Feb).
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Yep, heard that yesterday Matt... After the interview Evans didn't sound convinced by the designers spurious viewpoint, which IMO didn't carry much conviction.
I bet Boris is spitting blood that these buses are being used in those real tory hotspots of Islington & Hackney.. That's why he sent the vehicles on a tour of the suburbs - where they won't be used. Just in order to illustrate to his potential voters how millions from their taxes is being squandered well used for his re-election campaign..
The money would have been better spent i.e. on provided pavement to platform access for wheelchairs and pushchairs to underground stations http://www.flickr.com/photos/isarsteve/6926162821/in/photostream/li...
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Stephen I think you've finally revealed the real motivation for such antipathy as exists for London's new buses.
The angelic Bendy buses are Ken (Labour) and the nasty new Routemasters are Boris buses (Conservative).
It's a pity our new buses can't be seen as the latest form of public transport and assessed on those criteria alone.
I think the new buses look great, but that's just my subjective opinion. If people are encouraged to use or switch to public transport due to the smart, world-class buses, having flair and pizzazz, I see that as a good thing.
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No Clive, I'm very much against public transport being used by ANY politicians for cheap expensive re-election gimmicks.. and have been so since Barbara Castle as transport minister brought in a regulation stating that only new buses equipped for one-man-operation* (*1960s term) would be given a government grant.
She was also repsonsible for the passing over the running of London Transport to the GLC on 01/01/1970, which quickly saw the demise of 'out county' or the running down of cross border services (green buses). Look at public transport in places like Loughton or Epsom, both clearly part of London and compare it to that in Romford, further away from the centre, but part of a London Borough.
Politicians in my view, need to be kept away from the running of Public Transport
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@Clive Could you explain what you mean by world-class please? A rather tired term I would have thought.. especially when connected with London's transport system..
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I missed this posting back on February. But it caught my eye after I saw the traffic cone installation outside the Victoria & Albert Museum designed by Heatherwick Studio, and people told me about their design for the Olympic "cauldron" with its 204 "petals".
The sound clip linked to by Matt also caught my ear when I caught up with this discussion. Around 3'.40" in the clip Thomas Heatherwick challenges the "formulaic cliché" ... that cities can make themselves distinctive by having a flash-pants art gallery ..." He suggests: "the word 'culture' has got hogged by arts projects ..."
He proposes a wider view of what makes cities distinctive; and that 'culture' includes design, engineering, and our buses.
Of course, I would hear this sympathetically because it echoes my own scepticism about the Council's obsession with "Cultural Quarters".
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scepticism about the Council's obsession with "Cultural Quarters".
Yes. This ain't la rive gauche.
In a similar vein, can I also make a small plea about the overuse, especially in planning terms, of vibrant. It adds little to nothing to representations for a planning application. If my plan is said to be more vibrant than yours, we enter into a vibrancy arms race. It's an empty feel-good buzz word. In a planning context, vibrant should be hung, drawn and culturally quartered.
IMO, the more traditional amenity is better.
Alan: I still like your Boris-Bus variant. I've finally remembered the genre into which it fits: your expert blend of the old and new is partly Steam Punk style!
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Clive, your small plea about "vibrant" will have no effect. In a planning or regeneration context most users of the term will strenuously avoid making their meaning clear and more easily understood.
To understand why, you need to bear in mind a key fact. Almost certainly you are reading not English, but Obfuscandian. And the term "vibrant" is most often found in a dialect of the Obfuscandian language called Regenero-babble.
For Obfuscandians, to speak or write Plain English would be extremely bad manners. Their aim is a generally upbeat vagueness. They'd never say, like Thomas Heatherwick: "Driving round London you cannot beat sitting at the front of a double-decker bus looking out across London."
Instead they'd probably issue some glossy brochure with reversed-out white text on black pages. It would have lots of colour photos of buses and carefully cropped bits of road. And with a minimal number of words which said fluffy and entirely vacuous things like:
"We share the sense of urgency held by the people who live and work in London to see buses transformed. We are determined to work with partners, businesses and local residents to build a better bus. We will increase the pace of bus transformation for the better. It is rightly an ambitious programme for change. We have to ensure we set the bar high. My commitment is to do all that we can to deliver against our ambition."
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We feel confident that the public would agree that this will secure the future.
(I make no charge on this occasion. A PR company, such as Lexington Communications*, would charge you a great deal for the development and deployment a phrase of equal majesty).
*a council PR consultant
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