RETURN OF THE ROUTEMASTER
En route to a new icon
Following a pledge to rid the capital of the bendy bus, London mayor Boris Johnson launched
a competition to design a next-generation Routemaster. Stuart Nathan reports
THERE can’t be many automotive icons
more evocative than the London double-
decker bus — or, to be more specific, the
Routemaster with its goggly headlights,
distinctive radiator grille and rounded
contours. And, most of all, that open rear
platform with the pole on the corner,
allowing passengers to jump on and off
whenever they wanted,
28
But, of course, the Routemaster is
no more. Former London mayor Ken
Livingstone signed its death-warrant
when he brought in the continental-style
bendy buses, loathed by many for their
bulk and ability to block London’s
narrow and oddly-angled road junctions.
They may be more accessible to wheel-
chair and pushchair-users and offer more
knee-room than the Routemaster, but
they sacrificed the convenience of the
open platform for the greater safety of
doors. A few old Routemasters still ply a
couple of tourist routes, providing photo
opportunities as they round Trafalgar
Square or glide over Westminster Bridge,
but mostly their days are past.
Or they were, until new mayor Boris
Johnson, the Conservative with an eye
for the populist gesture, made it part of
his electoral campaign platform to bring
back the bus with the platform. After
winning the election, he launched a com-
petition to design a new Routemaster,
with a prize of £25,000. Well over 400
entries later, the competition is now
closed, and a winner is expected around
the time you are holding this issue of The
Engineer in your hands.
But there are winning designs, and
then there are designs that get built.
Transport for London (TfL) the body
which will oversee the ordering and
deployment of any new buses, declined to
be interviewed for this feature. However,
its programme manager for new buses,
David Hampson-Ghani, has been reported
as saying that the company which wins
the manufacturing tender for the new-
generation Routemaster will be handed a
folder of the winning designs and asked
to come up with their own fusion of the
best concepts, features and technological
fixes.
So, looking at some of the designs
Capoco Design’s
original concept,
above, was for a
hi-tech, retro
double-decker.
The company has
since amended
its design
from higher-profile entrants, what sort
of features could London’s next public
transport icon have?
The stipulations of the competition
were rather sketchy. The new design
had to have an open platform, good use
of interior space, and it had to be
accessible; it also had to use green
technology in some way. Apart from
those, the page was blank.
One new Routemaster design
actually pre-dated the competition. Last
Christmas, Autocar magazine commis-
sioned Capoco Design to come up with
a concept for a hi-tech but retro double-
decker. Capoco’s creative director,
Alan Ponsford, said that the company
had entered the mayor’s competition
with an amended design, but its origi-
nal includes some interesting features.
Chief among these is the drivetrain.
The bus still has an engine up front,
behind a very familiar-looking radiator
grille, but it doesn’t drive the wheels
and it isn’t diesel. Instead, Ponsford
opted for a 2.3 litre Ford petrol engine
adapted to burn hydrogen, similar to
one that Boeing is currently using to
drive a UAV drone, with the fuel stored
in a filament-wound tank below the
bus’s staircase.
This engine runs at a constant,
optimised speed, turning a 97kW generator
that charges
continues 30 ➜
the EnGIneeR 10–23 NOVEMBER 2008
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