A new bus has started running on route 358 between Crystal Palace and Orpington. They call it the tram bus.
It's not really a tram, it's "a bus with tram styling" according to the manufacturers, Spanish company Irizar. They make two lengths of vehicle and to be fair the 18m articulated version does look a lot more like a tram, but TfL opted for the 12m version because London no longer buys bendies.
These are 100% electric vehicles which will have appealed to TfL in their shift to a zero-emission bus fleet by 2030. They have a striking design featuring a large glazed surface and a swooshing chrome perimeter ring, this to "underline the break with the bus’s cubism". They use pantograph technology to allow fast charging of the new buses at each end of their route. And they're also very very late.
You get a good sense of how very very late they are from the headlines of the six articles MyLondon has published about the tram bus.
At least 18 months late in fact, thanks to a variety of issues including driver training, power connections and securing ownership of land needed for the charging stations. Two of the vehicles that came into service yesterday have '23' numberplates, that's how long they've been hanging around the depot. But they are now out and about, and judging by the Day 1 experience are turning heads in much the same way as the New Bus For London did when it first rolled out in 2012.
This is the charging point at Crystal Palace bus station, one end of the 358's mammoth 15 mile route. The bus pulls into a special bay beneath a strange grey contraption and a red pantographswoops down to top up the on-board batteries. The juice comes from a grey box at the roadside, the size of a bus shelter, whose charging capacity can vary from 50 to 600 kW. A six minute boost is enough to send the vehicle on its way, topping up a single deep charge in the depot overnight. Other electric buses can only recharge at the depot so aren't usually used on longer routes, whereas here the swift turnaround helps keep the fleet at an economic size.
If you step aboard, through the narrower-than-normal front door, watch out for certain other innovations. The seats are high-backed, like on a train, and also 'quilted' (for which read grey plastic). Charging points for mobile devices are available with a choice of two types of socket. Some of the 'stop' buttons are by the window rather than on the aisle. The floor has slip protection, which you probably won't notice because you won't fall over. The bus is air-conditioned so all the windows have a sign saying they don't open. Even the ding of the bell, the whirr of the door and the hum of the engine are subtly different.
Watch out too for the unusual glass panels along the side of the bus. If you sit in the front seats it's not just your head and torso that are visible from outside, it's your legs too, so perhaps think twice about any bags you push up against the glass. The wheelchair space has a palm-operated assistance button with a wheelchairless symbol, another innovation new to London. Passengers additionally benefit from a digital screen displaying the names of the next stops, although I question the value of listing the status of the eleven Underground lines down the right-hand side given that the 358 spans the borough of Bromley and the nearest tube station is miles away.
Importantly the fleet isn't yet all in place so if you turn up hoping to ride the 358 you're more likely to get an old vehicle than new. It took me over half an hour to finally find and board one because most of what rumbled by were less attractive diesel workhorses. One day there'll be 20 tram buses at Orpington depot but yesterday only nine appeared on the streets, never all at the same time, which isn't quite the hoped-for environmental gamechanger.
Fingers crossed tram buses prove the case for pantograph technology, enabling cleaner vehicles to run for longer across the capital, but as yet there are no plans to introduce them on any other routes so there is a risk they remain a visually-arresting one-off.
