New Bus For London

According to BBC News the new bus for London is just half complete with the actual unveiling at the end of the year in London. The first bus will be tested in Spring 2011 with the first five prototypes hitting the streets of the capital by Spring 2012. What’s very apparent is that this is certainly a striking and unusual looking bus where the designers have got their way.

There are swooping glass windows, especially near the staircases. There seems to be quite a lot of space (although not all the seats are in), however there doesn’t seem to be a lot of headroom upstairs and I’m (nearly) 5ft 10. And it’s a bus specifically designed for central London. I doubt very much you will see it in outer London. It’s a bus that will stop a lot in very congested areas.

It will be a hybrid bus with low emissions, good fuel consumption and it has brakes that recharge the battery. This mock-up is fully to scale. It’s made of plastic, steel and wood but it lets the designers work out problems. All of those in Ballymena, unsurprisingly perhaps, were raving about the new bus. The investment by Transport for London is £7.8 million – some have called it Boris Johnson’s vanity project.