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UK Market Data

Mayor launches Routemaster competition

A COMPETITION to design a new Routemaster for London has been launched by mayor Boris Johnson. It calls for a two- or three-axle double-decker up to 13.5m long with a minimum of 72 seats, and two entrances – one a rear open platform. It is 40 years since the last new rear platform bus entered UK service.

There are in fact two competitions. One is an apparently serious design process with a £25,000 prize; the other is looking for design concepts and is open to children – prompting one manufacturer to ask if it should submit its ideas in crayon rather than using computer-aided design drawings. The competition closes on 19 September, with the winners being announced at the end of October.

Key features of the design will include an open platform to allow passengers to board and alight quickly and easily; good use of interior space; accessibility; and green technology.  With the rebirth of the Routemaster – the first is intended to enter service by 2012 – comes the demise of London’s 400 Mercedes-Benz artics, which will be phased out by 2015 as existing contracts expire.

The initial response from bus makers has been cautious. “We will give it careful thought,” says Adrian Wickens of Volvo Bus, “but we do have reservations about the safety of an open platform".

Mark Houlton, Darwen Group commercial director, confirms his company’s interest in the competition. “I am sure our design team will relish the opportunity to develop designs with less constraints than they would normally have to work within. Whilst some of the required features appear to be contrary to current vehicle design and operating practices, I am confident that some good ideas will come out of the competition.”

Johnson’s new-generation Routemaster poses a number of potential problems for manufacturers. Numbers will be low, so the vehicle will be expensive. It will not be suitable for service elsewhere in Britain, ending the current practice of some operators of cascading London vehicles to their subsidiaries in other parts of Britain.

And while no manufacturer is going to criticise anything involving London, there is a certain off-the-record cynicism among some, with a number questioning whether or not a business case can be made for a specialist low-volume right-hand-drive double-deck bus. Another wonders whether any UK manufacturer would want to submit designs to a competition in which there would be no safeguard for their intellectual property rights. All or parts of winning designs could be selected and then incorporated in a bus where the construction would be put out to tender.

And one manufacturer notes: “The original Routemaster was such a wonderful design that only one operator outside London bought it.”

Alan Ponsford of Capoco Design, which last year produced a Routemaster proposal for Autocar magazine, says: “It’s a bus design competition, and these don’t come along very often. We’re bus designers, and we’ll certainly be looking at it.”

Aside from the cost of developing a new Routemaster, there remain questions about the costs of operating it. Speaking for the Unite section of the TGWU, regional industrial officer Peter Kavanagh says: “Unite welcomes any initiative that will remove some of the current pressures from drivers and make their working environment safer. We of course would like to see the return of the conductors - these were our members after all.

“However we must return to the issue of funding for this project. Mr Johnson’s figures are wildly off the mark. You would have to be Merlin the magician to make his figures add up. On labour costs alone we estimate that replacing the bendy buses would cost in the region of £135million.

“We can say with certainty that he will not be finding any extra money through cutting our members’ terms and conditions. We can’t see how Mr Johnson will make this work without raising fares substantially.”

Unite estimates that 2,640 new conductors and 1,320 new drivers would be required as a new Routemaster would have significantly less capacity than the current 140-passenger articulated buses.

London last considered a new-generation Routemaster in the 1980s, but nothing came of it.

www.london.gov.uk