I have driven a Routemaster and, thanks to Arriva, a couple of double deckers, but this was something else. Learning to reverse alone can take four solid hours of practice.After a few minutes' tuition, I was in the driver's seat with my right foot resting on the gas pedal of a 6.4-litre turbocharged six-cylinder engine. Mr Lynde says drivers moving on to articulated buses get 45 hours of training over 20 days. The driver can change the destination screens at the touch of a button. The bus has anti-skid brakes, two sun roofs, 10 CCTV cameras and window blinds. The 278bhp engine is at the rear of the bus, making it so quiet it is hard to tell when it has been switched on.

One of the doors has a fully extendable ramp for wheelchairs. "They are the most comfortable bus I have ever been in, the controls are really accessible and air-con as standard is marvellous."The driver's cab is certainly state of the art. The steering column and control panel are fully adjustable, and to complement the air con is a booster heater that can warm the whole bus in 10 minutes. The problem stemmed from pipes carrying pressurised air to the brakes, door and suspension system that had a tendency to burst.Worse was to come when Transport for London (TfL) chose to replace the Routemasters on the 73 route through Islington (rich with lawyers and media types) with bendybuses All hell broke loose. Websites were set up and protest groups launched to save what is still a global image of London.Perhaps the only major party not to have had a say are the drivers. Six months after the 73 went bendy, Arriva's commercial support manager, Dave Jones, believes passengers are getting used to them."Everyone is passionate about the RM and there was a campaign to save it but we don't get as many adverse comments now," he says.Paul Webb, 48, a driver who has piloted most types of bus to run in London over the past 25 years, has been in control of bendybuses since April last year.

The vehicle started with a bad press in London after early models developed a habit of bursting into flames. After a century of the two-storey bus and the gradual emergence of single deckers and minibuses, this country has paved the way for the inevitable conclusion - a double decker arranged horizontally.From the transport manager's perspective it's a bit of a no-brainer. Each bendybus can carry 142 people compared with 90 on a modern double-decker, and almost twice the number carried on the ageing Routemasters, the hop-on-hop-off vehicles with conductors that are still found in central London.On the bendybus passengers must have a ticket before boarding. They then simply get on through one of three double doors and the driver can move off straight away without having to wait for fares - as they have done in Continental cities for decades.The bendybus's fans in the capital say it is even quicker than the Routemaster, but passengers are less enthused.