| Today
marked the launch of the long-awaited Heritage
Routemaster services. A short ceremony at Trafalgar
Square just before nine o'clock was followed by the entry
into service of just ten RMs on short-workings of the 9
and 15. Since the buses chosen are Marshall-refurbished
'Dartmasters' and the routes neither working to the full
extent of their parents nor numbered to distinguish them,
you'd think neither heritage, nor routes. I was sceptical
too, until I saw the superb work at least one of the two
contracted companies has put in, in a very short window,
to ensure that their Routemasters are damn near perfect.
That got me thinking how much incredible potential these
slivers of routes actually have - because if they're
successful, we can try and lobby for the heritage concept
to be added to other London bus routes. In that way,
Londoners will have real choice and genuine inclusivity,
and everybody can have what they want. |
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The infamous
twosome responsible for the rundown of the
Routemaster in London braved the crowds on hand
to launch the services this morning, but the
predictable and tedious rehearsed speeches they
trotted out to the assembled media about mothers
in buggies were irrelevant compared to the
condition of the buses, which really does speak
for itself. The livery is 1960s London Transport,
down to gold underlined fleetnames and
fleetnumbers. In a superb effort, Stagecoach East
London, who now operate a sixth of the 15 from
Waterden Road garage in Stratford, have gone to
the trouble of fitting original wings so as to be
able to restore the original polished chrome
headlight rings, and have even brought back
proper white-on-black registration numbers to the
correct font and size (something that has been
difficult to accomplish in recent years!) Who
would have thought a Dartmaster could look so
good? Especially since the late decision to
acquire only those (mostly ex-Sovereign RMs from
the 13) with original registration numbers meant
taking the risk of picking up some lemons,
because Sovereign's record in the maintenance
department wasn't that great. And all this in
only three weeks since the loss of the 13. First
London (CentreWest) have a slice of the 9, but
only RM 1913 (ALD 913B, left)
was ready in time, with not quite as much
attention paid to it as to Stagecoach East
London's RM 1933 (ALD 933B, right). |
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It's rather
fitting that RM 1933 (ALD 933B), with its
pedigree as a London Transport Golden Jubilee
vehicle 22 years ago, should have been the launch
bus and the inaugural 15. When the original
specification was cut down from a proposed six
routes and fifty vehicles to today's two routes
with five each, what to number them was a
question that was resolved rather simply due to a
plank of the DDA, which states something to the
order that any non-accessible route paralleling
an accessible service must carry the same route
number. However, the resulting 9 and 15 (or 9H
and 15H, to give them their internal codes) only
serve a short section of each route
(Aldwych-Royal Albert Hall on the 9 and Tower
Hill-Trafalgar Square on the 15), with the
resulting possible confusion to passengers, who
have been trained by endless service changes to
expect that all routes run between the same
termini at the same times every day, regardless
of how efficient that is (or not) to the
schedule. Still, now that TfL have evidently shed
their taboo against mixing crew and OPO on the
same route, not to mention having more than one
operator contracted to run a route (the 9 is
otherwise London United's province), no barrier
stands in the way of introducing more heritage
components to other routes. A good idea would be
to start with some articulated routes like the
12, 38 and 73! And the pointless ban on serving
Oxford Street could be overturned sharpish, to
the benefit of all. Running as WA61-65, the 15's
quintet comprised RMs 324, 1933, 1968, 2071 and
2089, all of which were in full London Transport
livery with all the accoutrements mentioned
above. |
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As mentioned
earlier, only RM 1913 was in the complete
heritage livery for CentreWest, and it did not
stick around. Westbourne Park's five Routemasters
on the 9 thus comprised a colourful mix of RMs
1280 (ex-Brixton with Arriva stone band) 1627,
1735 (both ex-Sovereign all-red), 1776
(ex-Clapton, red with white band) and RM 1640 (640 DYE), making a
return to Westbourne Park, who last used it on
the 23. Its next garage, Clapton of Arriva London
North, never did get around to painting over its
yellow band, as seen here as the bus approaches
the Royal Albert Hall terminus in mid-afternoon.
All the buses have a dedicated advert, which is
just this side of the tacky 'Disney' stereotype
that happily didn't prove to be the case, and is
the only facet of the Heritage Routes that truly
feels artificial. Ken Livingstone tried to
convince the media today that he had always
intended to retain some Routemasters, but I've
already said both he and TfL have become too
detached to comprehend or care what Londoners really
think about what's been done, so I'm not as
easily fooled as your typical TV crew might be.
The ITN lot certainly weren't. |
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| So
the Heritage Routes are a nice gesture, and one that's
been carried off very professionally, but they remain
merely that - a gesture. The real last Routemaster route
is still going to be lost in three weeks, and that's the
159. Will a Heritage component duly shadow that route
into the shabby inner city bits of South London?
Mainstream critics of the Heritage Routes have already
expressed displeasure that neither the 9(H) nor the 15(H)
serve Whitehall or Big Ben, and for my purposes I'm not
impressed at how they've been marketed strictly at
tourists, when Londoners who actually live and work in
the city are far more needy and deserving of the quality
they represent. Running only between 9.30 and 6.30, they
are virtually useless for getting to and from work, and
only serve the one railhead at Charing Cross. But if we
and you take them in preference to a stiff-seated,
asphyxiating, noisy lump like the Trident or Volvo B7TL,
their success will hopefully spawn more. Even in such
penny numbers the Heritage Routemasters are a critical
improvement to the present anonymous and uncomfortable 9
and 15 routes, and show up what a low level of quality
the rest of the network has declined to as a whole. They
deserve to succeed, and they must, because that's all
we've got left. |
