The London bendy bus - Matthew Wharmby

Between 2002 and 2006 six of London?s bus companies put into service 390 articulated ?bendy? buses on twelve routes for Transport for London. - - During what turned out to be a foreshortened nine years in service, the Mercedes-Benz Citaro G buses familiar on the continent and worldwide earned an unenviable reputation in London; according to who you read and who you believed, they caught fire at the drop of a hat, they maimed cyclists, they drained revenue from the system due to their susceptibility to fare evasion, they transported already long-suffering passengers in standing crush loads like cattle and they contributed to the extinction of the Routemaster from frontline service. In short, the bus we hated. - - This account is an attempt by a long-time detractor of the bendy buses to set the vehicles in their proper context ? not quite to rehabilitate them, but to be as fair as is possible towards a mode of transport which felt about as un-British as could be.