.T plunges in with
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lew decker orders
3NDON Transport is about to buy over 900 new generation )uble-deckers with next to no experience of the vehicles in ‘rvice.
It wants Greater London ouncil to grant authority for to spend about £22m on an:her 450 vehicles and spare arts, and says it can only take eyland Titans and/or Metroammell Weymann Metrouses.
As delivery is required in )80, LT says it cannot delay irther a decision on ordering "otherwise we.will go down le queue and will miss out," a pokesman told 'CM.
LT is already ominitted to uying 200 Metrobuses and 50 Titans, and has taken devery of the first few of the 'itans. They have been underoing engineering and driving amiliarisation programmes in the Havering area and are expected to enter service this month.
Five pre-production Metrobuses ordered ahead of the main batch of 200 have been in service for a few weeks, but LT says it is too early to tell how successfully they are operating.
Following its troubled 10 years of AEC Swift/Merlin and Daimler Fleetline operation, GLC stipulated last year that the new generation of vehicles should be tested extensively in service before large scale orders are placed.
But the threat of delivery delays forced a decision to place the 450-vehicle 1978/79 order, which is intended to rid the undertaking of several of the Fleetlines when they become seven years old. A GLC spokeswoman told CM that some of the LT's older buses were "beyond repair."
Commenting on the order, which GLC and LT hope will be placed "within the next few weeks", GLC London Transport committee chairman Dr Gordon Taylor said: "These new vehicles will mean that fewer buses will be off the road for repairs, thus increasing reliability, which is the key to an improved service."