A Difficult Phase Made Fun
Go-Ahead London introduce their first 'New Routemaster' hybrid buses to Camberwell (Q) for their London Central route 12.
Route 12 is a central London route which connects to south London from the popular tourist attraction midpoint of the renowned Oxford Street shopping district, Oxford Circus. Parked discreetly around the corner at Cavendish Place, drivers take a right to enter the upper section of Regent Street towards the first bus stop for Oxford Circus Station. It is generally a straight dive into traffic as the route steadily progresses down Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus, queuing up for the green lights to permit a more quick drive downhill along Haymarket towards Trafalgar Square.
Abundant in tourist hotspots, the route takes the second exit of Trafalgar Square onto Whitehall, driving past 10 Downing Street. The last landmark to see is Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the route making a left to go over Westminster Bridge, the London Eye in the distance, towards Lambeth.
Lambeth's tranquility compensates for the busy atmosphere of the West End as route 12 soon approaches Elephant & Castle, navigating its way towards Camberwell Green where brief traffic can be encountered. Peckham follows, traffic met again on the high road before a quick duck towards The Aylesham Centre directs the route to Peckham Rye Station. The greenery in East Dulwich follows before a suburban ending to the popular scenic route.
Route 12 was allocated Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 bodied Volvo B9TL (WVL) and Volvo B5L hybrid (WHV1-16) on 5 November 2011 when its articulated buses were withdrawn from service.
Camberwell (Q) would soon introduce diesel prototype Wright Gemini 3 buses to route 12 with the popular V6 (BF63 HFE), based on the Volvo B5TL chassis, in late 2013. A year later, this bus was replaced by WSD1 (SN64 CTV), another Wright Gemini 3 but with the new Wright StreetDeck chassis. This bus is allocated alongside the route's new allocation of 'New Routemaster' hybrid buses, introduced from 28 March 2015.
LT417-456 were phased into service, but their arrival meant many buses from the route's reasonably high PVR of 36 had to be transferred. Many Volvo B9TLs introduced new arrival route 432 to Go-Ahead London: London Central from Stockwell (SW). However, it was a very interesting move for Go-Ahead London to transfer their Volvo B5L hybrids to route 436, fully converting the New Cross (NX) service to hybrid operation with EH1-20 already allocated to the route. This ousted the Enviro400s on the route to east London for Go-Ahead London: Dockland Buses.
I took a brief journey onboard LT421 (LTZ 1421) on route 12 in early April, travelling to Oxford Circus from Trafalgar Square. Route 12 is a high demand bus service and its many passengers seemed to have done well to showcase how unsympathetic they are to the people who clean and maintain the buses back at the bus garage: my brief analysis encountered a very littered bus, surprising considering the bus was new yet looked like it had been in service for a while. Nevertheless, the journey was fast and we breezed to Oxford Circus to hint promise for route 12 and its 'New Routemasters'.
Coincidentally, LT421 was the bus that arrived at Oxford Circus first for a trip to Peckham Rye. The promise initially hinted by the same bus during my evening journey months ago was not displayed during my daytime journey. Ignoring the litter on the entrance staircase, I focused on the driving to start off with. The general West End traffic meant we were not going fast at all, but it was when we had escaped the queue at Piccadilly Circus that the driver seemed to maintain the deliberately slow speeds stuck in traffic on Regent Street to display similar speeds on the traffic-free one-way road of Haymarket!
Eventually reaching Westminster Bridge Road, a normally fast and fun section for any route, I was instead forced to stare at my speedometer with urgent anticipation for the bus to achieve at least 20mph. Withdrawing my analysis of driving style did not help me to review the ride quality of the bus as the 'New Routemaster', purposefully built for smooth journeys, would not go faster than 15-20mph so I could see how the bus dealt with rough parts of the road.
I instead reverted to the air-conditioning, only due to the attention it grabbed from my boredom as its presence was made heard all throughout the journey. Soon, I thought about the recent discovery of Metroline's poor 'New Routemasters' emitting more pollutants than a ten-year older ALX400 diesel bus, the batteries unable to switch the bus to hybrid-electric mode.
This focused my attention onto the engine, which did not seem to want to stop reverberating its humming through the seating of the bus. If the bus did ever change to electric mode, which it should have done for most of the journey so far with the speeds the driver averaged, I could not notice.
We did finally achieve 25mph on approach to Camberwell Green after a general maximum speed of 15mph in between stops. This was a good way to depart the bus as a driver changeover graced us at Medlar Street bus stop, Camberwell. Off went the older male driver, on came a young female driver who immediately started averaging 20mph. This driver only went under 15mph if traffic forced more cautious speeds and it was a much faster journey from Camberwell to Peckham Rye.
I next went on LT446 (LTZ 1446) a few days later. LT429 (LTZ 1429 - Bpay advert) was at the front of the queue of parked buses at Cavendish Place bus stand, so I was surprised to see LT446 approach Oxford Circus Station / Margaret Street bus stop first. Another littered bus, I could expect nothing more than a slow start in the West End on a Saturday, full of shoppers and tourists making full use of the weekend, most free from work. Haymarket had one-lane traffic courtesy of roadworks on the other two lanes available, extending West End traffic towards Trafalgar Square further than Piccadilly Circus. The driver's eagerness behind the wheel made the bus feel like it equalled the duration spent on Haymarket in traffic that LT421 spent a few days prior with a clear road ahead!
The driver was quite patient with his driving whilst we were held up in traffic, not making any aggressive manoeuvres which would agitate other road users and start the musical anger of honking horns one would regard to as the norm of central London traffic. However, when there was space to do so, you could feel the driver's stored aggression as he accelerated mid-turn, most favourably displayed at the Whitehall exit of Trafalgar Square.
Expecting some fun with less traffic, all that had to be done to ensure we did not go faster along the traffic-free Whitehall was a sly overtake by LT429. My driver immediately drove slower than his traffic-escaping driving displayed at Trafalgar Square. He started stopping at the remaining unoccupied bus stops along Whitehall just to maintain the headway LT429 (admittedly in my favour) should have been keeping behind us in the first place!
Some decades later, the traffic lights at the end of Whitehall turned green, allowing us to turn onto Westminster Bridge Road. Coasting over Westminster Bridge into Lambeth, the journey started to get more interesting as we approached Elephant & Castle. The iBus had an interesting announcement (and less unnecessary than previous additions included to other LT routes' iBus systems) notifying passengers at St. George's Circus to 'Expect delays at Elephant & Castle'. I only clocked this on the iBus display as the actual recorded voice of the iBus was quite quiet, thus easily overwhelmed by the animated passengers on the relatively busy bus.
The driver ensured we were not delayed by reinstating the stored aggression identified earlier on in the West End on approach to St George's Circus. Not wanting to wait around and obey the red traffic lights with the rest of the standstill queue of vehicles to the right for exits onto Blackfriars Road, Borough Road and London Road, the driver drove straight on through the second set of lights for the left lane exit onto Waterloo Road before manoeuvring exquisitely onto the right lane through the small space available to beat the lights without actually going through them: expert driving! We had to wait at the following set of lights, though this was momentary and less than what it would have been queuing up at the previous traffic lights!
We encountered traffic at Camberwell, so this allowed me to focus on the engine, which is supposed to switch off when the bus has stopped or at low speeds. However, the world's best hybrid system did not seem to be doing the job desired. I must say, I have discovered more effective and efficient hybrid systems by ADL with their Enviro400H and The Wright Group with Volvo's B5LH. Some LTs older than the batch for the 12 even have better hybrid systems, which frequently switch off into electric mode and back into diesel mode upon acceleration, which should be the simple works of a hybrid bus.
Again, the air-conditioning was quite loud and constant like onboard LT421, although it was effectively keeping me cool on the bus whilst still allowing the warmth of the beautiful weather outside to be felt through the windows of the bus.
On approach to Peckham, a 171 held up the bus. My driver had to lift off the accelerator every time he got closer to the 171 to make adequate space between our bus and the bus ahead, just to feel as if he was getting somewhere. The last area with traffic was at The Aylesham Centre in Peckham, before a calm cruise via Peckham Rye, East Dulwich Road and Barry Road concluded the journey where the driver averaged 25mph to Dulwich Library, the route 12 terminus. Trust me, 25mph feels fast onboard a 'New Routemaster': the occasional bumpy feedback of the road through the tyres into the heavy bodywork does make the bus feel slightly faster than it is actually going, so you could supposedly conclude that ride quality onboard these buses is decent as the bus driver does not have to drive ridiculously fast to impress you.
Although route 148 has been negatively reviewed recently about its new buses, I have not recently been on its batch of 'New Routemasters' to change the ordering of my Borismaster Performance Hierarchy for the benefit of enthusiasts more familiar with the route. My memories of route 38 and its faultless buses as opposed to one standee experience on the 148 and the fact the route has never experienced customer assistants onboard these buses means route 38 is now at the top of the hierarchy, with the 148 and 9 completing the extremely close top three. The exceptional air-conditioning and overall ride quality of the LTs on fast route 8 slot into fourth with the similarly incredible ride quality of the LTs on the 453 following to complete my top five.
Now, where does route 12 enter the hierarchy? Its littered buses with louder air-conditioning noise and a less effective hybrid system means that it cannot be higher than the improved allocation of route 137 which makes travelling to Streatham Hill more inviting and rewarding with speed, the route in sixth (although this needs to be reviewed as the service has not been impressive recently, buses more packed than I have ever seen with the route's previous buses). The calm and smooth quality of the LTs on the 15 and the bumpy feedback-collecting but reasonably good buses on the 55 put those routes in seventh and eight. So we are really looking at ninth for route 12 because putting the route lower than the still gradually improving route 11 in tenth, the boring route 10 in eleventh and the lowest performing LTs on routes 390 and 24 in twelfth and thirteenth would be quite disrespectful towards the fun I did have whilst reviewing route 12.
The 'New Routemaster' hybrid buses on route 12 may have a few slow drivers but even with a slow driver, the route is incredibly fun to explore and the new buses have not necessarily lowered the excitement of route 12 in general - a decent achievement, to be fair. The hybrid system was not the best, the buses are more littered than you would find on any other LT route and the ride quality was just okay but not as smooth as you would expect from a 'New Routemaster'. Route 55 uses roads that are bumpier but the 12 seemed to be producing around the same if not more feedback than the buses on the 55.
Route 12 is a fantastic route to explore and its buses still provide a fun experience worth commending. Not nearly as much as fellow central London and 'New Routemaster' phasing route 73, though.
Route 12 is a central London route which connects to south London from the popular tourist attraction midpoint of the renowned Oxford Street shopping district, Oxford Circus. Parked discreetly around the corner at Cavendish Place, drivers take a right to enter the upper section of Regent Street towards the first bus stop for Oxford Circus Station. It is generally a straight dive into traffic as the route steadily progresses down Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus, queuing up for the green lights to permit a more quick drive downhill along Haymarket towards Trafalgar Square.
Abundant in tourist hotspots, the route takes the second exit of Trafalgar Square onto Whitehall, driving past 10 Downing Street. The last landmark to see is Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the route making a left to go over Westminster Bridge, the London Eye in the distance, towards Lambeth.
Lambeth's tranquility compensates for the busy atmosphere of the West End as route 12 soon approaches Elephant & Castle, navigating its way towards Camberwell Green where brief traffic can be encountered. Peckham follows, traffic met again on the high road before a quick duck towards The Aylesham Centre directs the route to Peckham Rye Station. The greenery in East Dulwich follows before a suburban ending to the popular scenic route.
Route 12 was allocated Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 bodied Volvo B9TL (WVL) and Volvo B5L hybrid (WHV1-16) on 5 November 2011 when its articulated buses were withdrawn from service.Camberwell (Q) would soon introduce diesel prototype Wright Gemini 3 buses to route 12 with the popular V6 (BF63 HFE), based on the Volvo B5TL chassis, in late 2013. A year later, this bus was replaced by WSD1 (SN64 CTV), another Wright Gemini 3 but with the new Wright StreetDeck chassis. This bus is allocated alongside the route's new allocation of 'New Routemaster' hybrid buses, introduced from 28 March 2015.
LT417-456 were phased into service, but their arrival meant many buses from the route's reasonably high PVR of 36 had to be transferred. Many Volvo B9TLs introduced new arrival route 432 to Go-Ahead London: London Central from Stockwell (SW). However, it was a very interesting move for Go-Ahead London to transfer their Volvo B5L hybrids to route 436, fully converting the New Cross (NX) service to hybrid operation with EH1-20 already allocated to the route. This ousted the Enviro400s on the route to east London for Go-Ahead London: Dockland Buses.
I took a brief journey onboard LT421 (LTZ 1421) on route 12 in early April, travelling to Oxford Circus from Trafalgar Square. Route 12 is a high demand bus service and its many passengers seemed to have done well to showcase how unsympathetic they are to the people who clean and maintain the buses back at the bus garage: my brief analysis encountered a very littered bus, surprising considering the bus was new yet looked like it had been in service for a while. Nevertheless, the journey was fast and we breezed to Oxford Circus to hint promise for route 12 and its 'New Routemasters'.
Coincidentally, LT421 was the bus that arrived at Oxford Circus first for a trip to Peckham Rye. The promise initially hinted by the same bus during my evening journey months ago was not displayed during my daytime journey. Ignoring the litter on the entrance staircase, I focused on the driving to start off with. The general West End traffic meant we were not going fast at all, but it was when we had escaped the queue at Piccadilly Circus that the driver seemed to maintain the deliberately slow speeds stuck in traffic on Regent Street to display similar speeds on the traffic-free one-way road of Haymarket!
Eventually reaching Westminster Bridge Road, a normally fast and fun section for any route, I was instead forced to stare at my speedometer with urgent anticipation for the bus to achieve at least 20mph. Withdrawing my analysis of driving style did not help me to review the ride quality of the bus as the 'New Routemaster', purposefully built for smooth journeys, would not go faster than 15-20mph so I could see how the bus dealt with rough parts of the road.I instead reverted to the air-conditioning, only due to the attention it grabbed from my boredom as its presence was made heard all throughout the journey. Soon, I thought about the recent discovery of Metroline's poor 'New Routemasters' emitting more pollutants than a ten-year older ALX400 diesel bus, the batteries unable to switch the bus to hybrid-electric mode.
This focused my attention onto the engine, which did not seem to want to stop reverberating its humming through the seating of the bus. If the bus did ever change to electric mode, which it should have done for most of the journey so far with the speeds the driver averaged, I could not notice.
We did finally achieve 25mph on approach to Camberwell Green after a general maximum speed of 15mph in between stops. This was a good way to depart the bus as a driver changeover graced us at Medlar Street bus stop, Camberwell. Off went the older male driver, on came a young female driver who immediately started averaging 20mph. This driver only went under 15mph if traffic forced more cautious speeds and it was a much faster journey from Camberwell to Peckham Rye.
I next went on LT446 (LTZ 1446) a few days later. LT429 (LTZ 1429 - Bpay advert) was at the front of the queue of parked buses at Cavendish Place bus stand, so I was surprised to see LT446 approach Oxford Circus Station / Margaret Street bus stop first. Another littered bus, I could expect nothing more than a slow start in the West End on a Saturday, full of shoppers and tourists making full use of the weekend, most free from work. Haymarket had one-lane traffic courtesy of roadworks on the other two lanes available, extending West End traffic towards Trafalgar Square further than Piccadilly Circus. The driver's eagerness behind the wheel made the bus feel like it equalled the duration spent on Haymarket in traffic that LT421 spent a few days prior with a clear road ahead!
The driver was quite patient with his driving whilst we were held up in traffic, not making any aggressive manoeuvres which would agitate other road users and start the musical anger of honking horns one would regard to as the norm of central London traffic. However, when there was space to do so, you could feel the driver's stored aggression as he accelerated mid-turn, most favourably displayed at the Whitehall exit of Trafalgar Square.
Expecting some fun with less traffic, all that had to be done to ensure we did not go faster along the traffic-free Whitehall was a sly overtake by LT429. My driver immediately drove slower than his traffic-escaping driving displayed at Trafalgar Square. He started stopping at the remaining unoccupied bus stops along Whitehall just to maintain the headway LT429 (admittedly in my favour) should have been keeping behind us in the first place!
Some decades later, the traffic lights at the end of Whitehall turned green, allowing us to turn onto Westminster Bridge Road. Coasting over Westminster Bridge into Lambeth, the journey started to get more interesting as we approached Elephant & Castle. The iBus had an interesting announcement (and less unnecessary than previous additions included to other LT routes' iBus systems) notifying passengers at St. George's Circus to 'Expect delays at Elephant & Castle'. I only clocked this on the iBus display as the actual recorded voice of the iBus was quite quiet, thus easily overwhelmed by the animated passengers on the relatively busy bus.
The driver ensured we were not delayed by reinstating the stored aggression identified earlier on in the West End on approach to St George's Circus. Not wanting to wait around and obey the red traffic lights with the rest of the standstill queue of vehicles to the right for exits onto Blackfriars Road, Borough Road and London Road, the driver drove straight on through the second set of lights for the left lane exit onto Waterloo Road before manoeuvring exquisitely onto the right lane through the small space available to beat the lights without actually going through them: expert driving! We had to wait at the following set of lights, though this was momentary and less than what it would have been queuing up at the previous traffic lights!
Again, the air-conditioning was quite loud and constant like onboard LT421, although it was effectively keeping me cool on the bus whilst still allowing the warmth of the beautiful weather outside to be felt through the windows of the bus.
On approach to Peckham, a 171 held up the bus. My driver had to lift off the accelerator every time he got closer to the 171 to make adequate space between our bus and the bus ahead, just to feel as if he was getting somewhere. The last area with traffic was at The Aylesham Centre in Peckham, before a calm cruise via Peckham Rye, East Dulwich Road and Barry Road concluded the journey where the driver averaged 25mph to Dulwich Library, the route 12 terminus. Trust me, 25mph feels fast onboard a 'New Routemaster': the occasional bumpy feedback of the road through the tyres into the heavy bodywork does make the bus feel slightly faster than it is actually going, so you could supposedly conclude that ride quality onboard these buses is decent as the bus driver does not have to drive ridiculously fast to impress you.
Although route 148 has been negatively reviewed recently about its new buses, I have not recently been on its batch of 'New Routemasters' to change the ordering of my Borismaster Performance Hierarchy for the benefit of enthusiasts more familiar with the route. My memories of route 38 and its faultless buses as opposed to one standee experience on the 148 and the fact the route has never experienced customer assistants onboard these buses means route 38 is now at the top of the hierarchy, with the 148 and 9 completing the extremely close top three. The exceptional air-conditioning and overall ride quality of the LTs on fast route 8 slot into fourth with the similarly incredible ride quality of the LTs on the 453 following to complete my top five.
Now, where does route 12 enter the hierarchy? Its littered buses with louder air-conditioning noise and a less effective hybrid system means that it cannot be higher than the improved allocation of route 137 which makes travelling to Streatham Hill more inviting and rewarding with speed, the route in sixth (although this needs to be reviewed as the service has not been impressive recently, buses more packed than I have ever seen with the route's previous buses). The calm and smooth quality of the LTs on the 15 and the bumpy feedback-collecting but reasonably good buses on the 55 put those routes in seventh and eight. So we are really looking at ninth for route 12 because putting the route lower than the still gradually improving route 11 in tenth, the boring route 10 in eleventh and the lowest performing LTs on routes 390 and 24 in twelfth and thirteenth would be quite disrespectful towards the fun I did have whilst reviewing route 12.
The 'New Routemaster' hybrid buses on route 12 may have a few slow drivers but even with a slow driver, the route is incredibly fun to explore and the new buses have not necessarily lowered the excitement of route 12 in general - a decent achievement, to be fair. The hybrid system was not the best, the buses are more littered than you would find on any other LT route and the ride quality was just okay but not as smooth as you would expect from a 'New Routemaster'. Route 55 uses roads that are bumpier but the 12 seemed to be producing around the same if not more feedback than the buses on the 55.
Route 12 is a fantastic route to explore and its buses still provide a fun experience worth commending. Not nearly as much as fellow central London and 'New Routemaster' phasing route 73, though.
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