It turns out that most of those roughly 700 entries for the New Bus For London competition were for the "imagine" section, which was primarily for bus-loving amateurs and kids. The "design" category, for serious bus pros, received 225, of which some fall into the "whole bus" sub-division and the rest into the "element" one for particular bus features (seats, windows, dashboards, hideous plasma screens for conveying unwanted advertising messages...?).
The task of deciding which submissions to all sections of the comp are worthy of further consideration has been assigned to David Quainton, an independent bus design specialist. He will also be a member of the judging panel, whose five other members are to be Peter Hendy, David Brown (TfL's MD of Surface Transport), two more senior London bus managers in Clare Kavanagh and Mike Weston, and Kulveer Ranger, Mayor Johnson's representative on Earth.
What will happen next? An overall winner will be named (first prize £25,000) though there will be secondary prizes too, including some awarded according to age, and I'm told that the panel will "harvest" the best ideas from all sources and then invite the bus designer - to be appointed later - to incorporate them as best it can.
The panel is expected to deliberate early next month. As Boris Watch points out, it contains several individuals associated with the advent of the bendy - further evidence, I'd say, that in the wake of Boris's win TfL showed itself to be every bit as adept at the art of politics as its new master at City Hall. It even got the fares hike Livingstone had denied it. Not such a creature of Ken after all, it seems.
