Having entered the scene last year, the double-decker is now advertising as often as time allows. Mayor Boris Johnson, one of the biggest supporters of the project, had a chance to personally test drive the bus last week, at Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire, and immediately after made his experience public.
Adorned with praising words and phrases like “the best” and a “marvel of technology,” the test drive is just the foreplay for what the mayor hopes will be a very successful career. Next year, at least five such buses are scheduled to enter public service, bringing the glamour back to public transportation six years after the former mayor, Ken Livingstone, retired the previous Routemaster platform.
The new bus uses an engine which is 15 percent more fuel-efficient than current hybrid buses or 40 percent more frugal than diesel-powered mass transportation vehicles. The bus will be able to carry 87 people, 62 sitting and 25 standing, half the capacity of the bus which it will eventually come to replace.
Additional details are yet to be released, but at least one very important attribute of the model was made public. Each unit of the new bus will cost the city of London 330,000 pounds. By 2013, about 40 such buses will be deployed in London.
Google News