The New Bus For The West Midlands?

[don]

There's already a standard brand new decker in Birmingham - they call it Alexander Dennis!

Indeed there is - and reading the blurb on the Heatherwick web site (design studio awarded NBFL design) they give the impression NBFL is the first integrally designed bus for decades - somewhat wide of the mark and rather disrespectful to the rest if the industry.

NBFL is a tremendous gamble - although one can have a great deal of faith in Wrightbus and their ability to design a durable well engineered vehicle, some of us will remember some of the more disastrous designs of the past - many of them associated with premature body faults in excessively long multi doored double deckers. Wright bus have been given a difficult remit as the design studio doesn't appear to have been involved in vehicle design before and one can imagine there having been difficulties incorporating the art design into a workable vehicle.

And the fact is there are perfectly good standard double deckers operating all over London.

Regarding dual doors, an issue found in most of the country was that the safety interlocks required to prevent vehicles driving off with the middle doors open resulted in dual doored vehicles being slower to operate at bus stops than single doored ones - whilst they resulted in reduced seating capacity - and in the case of lengthened vehicles to compensate, these tended to have structural weaknesses.

[Kevin_Brum12]

There's already a standard brand new decker in Birmingham - they call it Alexander Dennis!

Yes I think the Enviro 400 has pretty much become the West Midlands standard double decker of the present day.  Will be interesting to see if NX will order new Wright Gemini bodied vehicles or if Enviro 400's will continue to a point where they as numerous in the fleet as Fleetlines and Metrobuses were.   Of course there is the question of upgrading the 11; those combusting Presidents will need to be retired sooner rather than later.

[Stuharris 6360]

There's already a standard brand new decker in Birmingham - they call it Alexander Dennis!

Yes I think the Enviro 400 has pretty much become the West Midlands standard double decker of the present day.  Will be interesting to see if NX will order new Wright Gemini bodied vehicles or if Enviro 400's will continue to a point where they as numerous in the fleet as Fleetlines and Metrobuses were.   Of course there is the question of upgrading the 11; those combusting Presidents will need to be retired sooner rather than later.

think the Presidents are with us for a little while to come.

The Enviro 400 is certainly a very popular bus, i know a lot of fuss has been made in London of the NB4L, but Enviro 400s are the main bus in London at the moment, either in conventional or Hybrid form.

[Stevo]

I've ridden the LT - there are not many seats downstairs, most are on a plinth and several face backwards. In London people accept being forced to stand - we don't, up here. And it's so long! Give me an E400 any day, or a B5LH.

[Liverpool Street]

I think its a urine-take that there's standing loads on Sundays!!! Can we not bicker over a bus designed for London and try and improve the network we've got now?

NBFL has nothing to do with Birmingham and never will. It wouldn't work.