New Mayor for London Boris Johnson has announced the winner of the new routemaster design competition, a consortium including Aston Martin!
It's a full size double decker with front engine, a wide ramp central access for whelchairs and an open rear platform jump on access. Of course these three features will dramatically reduce the buses capacity for passengers so not much good thinking there.
No problem though, since I cannot ever see it appearing, in 2011 as predicted or any other time. All round the world beginning in Paris originally, we've seen the demise of open rear access buses as being too dangerous. On the old slow RT buses it was still acceptable, but the much faster routemasters made it more dangerous and led to a sharp rise in jump on and off accidents, one of the main reasons for them being phased out. I can't see our health and safety brigade ever allowing type approval for open platforms return, which will make a new front engine routemaster pointless as it will be the same as any other disabled access bus design but with less capacity.
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It's a full size double decker with front engine, a wide ramp central access for whelchairs and an open rear platform jump on access. Of course these three features will dramatically reduce the buses capacity for passengers so not much good thinking there.
No problem though, since I cannot ever see it appearing, in 2011 as predicted or any other time. All round the world beginning in Paris originally, we've seen the demise of open rear access buses as being too dangerous. On the old slow RT buses it was still acceptable, but the much faster routemasters made it more dangerous and led to a sharp rise in jump on and off accidents, one of the main reasons for them being phased out. I can't see our health and safety brigade ever allowing type approval for open platforms return, which will make a new front engine routemaster pointless as it will be the same as any other disabled access bus design but with less capacity.
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