124 The London Bus
This has come about in
response to the low emission
bus zones that current London
mayor Sadiq Khan started rolling
out in March 2017. These focus
on 12 London streets deemed to
be especially polluted, and one of
the first to come into effect was
in Putney High Street. Go-Ahead
London operates five major
double-deck routes through
Putney, so it had to upgrade
them all at the same time. Four
of them are run from its Putney
garage – the 14, 22, 74 and 430- and these now share three new
bus types and one existing type.
New are Alexander Dennis
Enviro400 MMCs and Volvo
B5LHs, the latter with Wright
Gemini 3 and MCV EvoSeti
bodies. Retained are older Volvo
B5LHs with Wright Eclipse
Gemini 2 bodywork. So now you
will find as much variety on the
14 as you can ever expect to see
on a single London bus route.
The final route in our original
list that has seen a change of
vehicle type is the 93 (Volume 4),
an inter-suburban route between
Putney Bridge and North Cheam,which we featured as recently as- Unusually, in this case the
buses have changed back to a
type that was used before.
The low emission bus zone
in Putney is again the culprit.
The 93 is another Go-Ahead
route, but unlike the other four
in the area, it is operated from
more distant garages (Sutton
and Merton), so could not share
in the bounty of new vehicles
introduced at Putney. However,
it too was using ageing buses: in
this case pure diesel Alexander
Dennis Enviro400s acquired
London by Bus
RIGHT & BELOW:
The 11 has gone
from Wright
Eclipse Gemini-
bodied Volvo
B7TLs like WVL4
dating from 2002
and photographed
at the Royal
Exchange to New
Routemasters
like LT119, shown
before it was fitted
with opening
windows.