Routemasters - an extended rant

[brixtonbrood]

Yet another nostalgic splurge by the press on the demise of the Routemaster (like George Best, it's taking its time going, and getting acres of coverage for each lurch towards the grave) has finally prompted me to vent my feelings at length.
a) Disability
Umm, I have mixed feelings on this one. Of the several gazillion buses I've travelled on and seen over the last four years, only two have had wheelchairs on. I don't really doubt the people who claim that it would be more cost-effective to give all wheelchair users an annual Dial and Ride cab allowance. But of course it's not just about wheel-chairs. The only time I've used a Routemaster in the last few years (solo shopping trip to Oxford Street) I was shocked by how narrow the aisle was (bearing in mind that this has a single entrance/exit, so you can't circulate down the bus towards the exit as you can with most modern buses, and have to squeeze back down the aisle again. Regardless of the helping hand of the chirpy cockney conductor, I can't see how a lot of the disabled/elderly/obese/encumbered people I see on the bus every day could have made that journey. I am reminded of Neil Kinnock's line "Do not be old, do not get fat, do not have kids".
b) Buggies
This is of course why I get so het up about this. The abolition of the Routemaster (along with the huge improvement in bus frequencies) has transformed our lives - making journeys that would have posed unthinkable challenges into simple, cheap, green days out.
I'm lucky enough that I could probably afford to learn to drive (without having too many accidents), or spend enormous amounts on black cabs - but what about the many young mothers who can't afford that - living miles from a staircase-riddled tube system? These are some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in London, and the ability to shop, to visit relatives, to register their baby's birth, or just to have a day out at the park is pretty essential I'd have thought.
c) Bendy buses
The Routemaster is not being withdrawn to replace it with bendy buses! Specifically, the 159 route, which is the one which finished yesterday, will have modern double deckers in future. There are bendy buses on about 3 routes in London, and they have not been desperately popular, even now they've stopped exploding, but the fact that people don't like them is not a reason to keep the Routemaster - the vast majority of London buses are modern double deckers, in a variety of designs (too many for my taste, as I can never remeber whether I need to get the Phil & Ted buggy on at the back).
d) Conductors
Yes it's lovely to have a uniformed staff member on all buses to answer questions, help old ladies with their bags, and discourage dubious behaviour and actual crime. But it costs a lot of money. London tax payers have paid a lot of money to fund the bus revolution, and for the most part it's money well-spent, as more people have been drawn to use a faster, more frequent, and frequently cheaper service. Bus occupancy numbers have risen visibly which is impressive given that there are so many more buses running. If all those buses were operated by two people rather than one, then that would require a huge amount of money, which the public might not be prepared to pay. My personal feeling is that we could do with more staff members on some buses, but only some. I'd much rather they saved the money to spend on transport police on the 3am bus from Trafalgar Square, and perhaps even to make the old ladies feel safer on the 3:30pm bus taking the sixteen year olds home from school, rather than running the sort of bus that absolutely requires a conductor 24 hours a day, even at 10:30am taking me and the kids to renew our library books.
e) The Today Programme and the media in general
Yes their vox pops found overwhelming nostalgic support for the Routemaster. Because they carried them out on Routemasters! There's a reason they didn't find the likes of me - because I can't get on the ##### things! Also, see point c, the 159 route will not have bendy buses on it so any chat about how horrible they are is irrelevant. Also, this is not the last journey for the Routemaster and the end of an era, they'll still be run on two tourist-friendly routes.
f) Aesthetics
It's a mode of transport! If you want pretty and historic, look in a museum, or go on a "heritage" tourist bus. I do think that far too much of this debate is driven by people for whom buses are things to look at from the back of a black cab and who haven't travelled by bus since 1963. Yes pretty is nice, but safe, cheap, reliable, warm, accessible are higher on my list of priorities. I will vote for pretty only when the two alternatives are evenly matched on the other criteria (OK I might bend a tiny bit on cost). Ditto fun.

I think that's it, but I reserve the right to post codicil rants when there's a particularly stupid article tomorrow.

Comments

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

I heard some pathetic whinger on the radio who's composed a song bemoaning the loss of the bus. I found it rather hard to believe, and why it's made it on to the news I couldn't understand.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Routemasters suit some kinds of users, and not others. I would think that they could usefully interspersed with accessible buses on very busy city centre routes?

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

The reasonable response would be to agree with that - but from a personal viewpoint I can just see myself stuck in the rain, desperate to get somewhere whilst bus after bus sails by, either not accessible or already full up with its complement of buggies (1, 2 or 3, depending on buggy size, make of bus and the mood of the driver).
AFAIK there isn't anyone who actively can't use any bus except a Routemaster, so I'd tend to let the needs of the few trump the preference of the many.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

There shouldn't need to be any trumping here. OK, so I've waited 45 mins for any bus at all on a route which is supposed to have a bus 'every few minutes', so I'm painfully aware that buses have problems. But if there's only one Routemaster in four buses (say), then you should have no grounds for complaint. Buggies should be collapsed when the Zone is filling up, anyhow?

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Yes one in four shouldn't be a problem - one in two would be a total pain - the problem is that unlike normal delays to service, once you get an undersupply of buggy spaces there becomes no way of telling if you'll ever be able to get on a bus, you could in theory be waiting for hours to get lucky. Collapsing buggies is only really an option if your child can walk fairly competently, otherwise the logistics become fiendish (especially with shopping).

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I've obviously no experience of handling pre-walkers in buggies, but my experience in travelling car-free with a folding bike prompts the question: what kinds of bags are you using for your shopping? Hands-free with a well-designed backpack is an imperative with a folding bike.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I use a large back-pack nappy bag, which is more or less full of nappies, changes of clothes, snacks, cups of juice, cutlery, books, toys, hand wipes, muslin, nappy changing mat and other apparatus, diary, phone, camera and purse before I start. It will carry a fair amount of small, dense shopping on top of that, but anything of any size needs to go in carriers.
The folding bicycle is a fair comparison - if you imagine doing that one handed with 12 kilos of baby on your hip whilst paying and persuading a three year old to go in the right direction you'll understand why folding buggies on public transport is not option number one - I occasionally hear the older generation saying how lucky we are - they did it, but they hated it as much as I would. I very very rarely see it done, even on crowded buses with lone toddlers in easy-fold buggies - drivers don't say "you'll have to fold it" they just say "no I'm full".

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I think you point (c) is the important point with regard to the media lunacy. It would be easy to get the impression that it is double decker buses that are being phased out.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Routemasters are great on Oxford Street, where you can hop and off along the congested street. With buses running more freely in London now, their disadvantages probably outweigh their merits.

I'm not sure the slower progress of OPO buses is a good idea, but as the opportunities to actually buy tickets on buses vanish, the advantage of conductor does go away.

BTW, I want to spell them busses...

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

An independent company ran Routemaster buses in Reading for a while some years ago.

Although rather scruffy, they were *much* faster to get you from A to B, simply because the bus doesn't have to be at a standstill to collect the fares. (Sadly, the cost of two salaries per bus ultimately caused the venture to fail).

This doesn't mitigate any of the problems you cite, of course, but in most places buses are a form of transport that are perceived to be incredibly inefficient. They stop frequently, they take indirect routes, they are irregular, expensive, and in the winter months a panacea for disease-spreading. We need positive messages about public transport and I doubt the elimination of the Routemaster is good news for people who have a choice about how to travel.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Fares were the reason that Livingstone was initially very much in favour of putting conductors on all buses, to keep them moving more smoothly.
In the end they've taken the alternative route of making fare taking as quick as humanly possible by a combination of flat fares, free passes for kids and the elderly, giving huge economic incentives for people to pay with Oyster cards or carnets and in the last resort simply not allowing you to pay cash in central London. Fewer than 10% of London bus fares are paid in cash.
Expense and frequency have been seen to with massive public subsidy (especially given that free parking is increasingly difficult and driving itself costs eight quid in the congestion zone). Speed has been addressed both with the fares measures, and rigorously policed bus lanes. There's a limit of course to how quick you can go when you're stopping so frequently, but that's inherent in the nature of the beast and can be a major selling point over tubes for shorter journeys.
Disease isn't an issue where you're competing with tube trains (and the buses are competing with the tube to some extent: the main aim is to get people out of their cars, but the tubes at rush hour are running beyond capacity, so anything that takes people out of them is a good thing). By the way, surely a panacea for disease-spreading is a good thing :)
All these are explanations for why TFL has achieved such a large take-up of buses amongst people like my ex-boss, a millionaire (I'm guessing) in his fifties and a life-long Merc driver who now commutes daily from Islington to the city by bus.
Unfortunately I can't see many of them transferring neatly to a town the size of Reading.
The messages thing is sad but true, which is why I've got a bit evangelical about this, no-one ever writes to the paper to say that they're happy.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why Britain cannot be like every other country in the world (OK, I exaggerate slightly) and have a cash-free system where you have to have pre-purchased something to travel.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

That's very much the way they're going - either by fiat as in the centre, where you actually can't get on without a ticket (there are dinky little machines at the stops a la foreign parts), or by coercive pricing.
For example, come January, a single tube journey from Paddington to Oxford Circus will cost you 1.50 if you pay by Oyster but 3 quid in cash - which strikes me as a lot. Bus fares will be 80p Oyster (I think it's 1 pound at rush hour) or 1.50 cash, where you can pay cash. That strikes me as reasonable - it's certainly fairer than only giving bulk discounts to the people who can buy travel cards, this way even the occasional user (or one who can't afford to pre-buy more than a tenner) can benefit from the economies of a cash-free system. And the silly cow who was arguing the toss with the driver about whether he could change a fiver for her (whilst simultaneously on the phone to her mate) on Battersea Rise on Thursday should be stung for all she can get. I will post soon recommending all Oxfordites and similar occasional London visitors to get a small pay-as-you-go Oyster come January, it should save them respectable sums of money.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise about the machines at bus stops. Well, I had seen the machines, I didn't realise you had to buy a ticket. A sound move.

I was thinking I should get an Oyster card but usually I come by train and get a one-day travelcard add-on.

The three pounds without one presumably must make London's the most expensive undergroundsubwaymetro system in the world.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

By the way, what is supposed to be wrong with bendi-buses? I have seen a reference on LJ to alleged greater dangers to cyclists, and I assume that whatever they have bought will have needed beefing up in some way as Britain seems to be, for some reason, uniquely inimical to any public transport vehicles and therefore any vehicles that work fine in some other country will have problems here.
However, what else is supposed to be the problem?

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I have only been on a bendy once in London as they don't run on any of my regular routes, but I believe that the problems are said to be:
a) they may suit Germany's long straight wide Strasse, but are incompatible with London's narrower wigglier road plan (even on the very few routes that TFL are prepared to use them on) - I think that there have been a few bollard/pavement incidents .
b) they are god's gift to fare dodgers since people can get on at all the doors simultaneously. They are widely held to be fare-optional, and fare-payers resent this.
c) they get over-crowded at rush-hour since there is no-one stopping everyone squashing on (of course this applies equally to tube trains).
d) their climate control is iffy, and you can't open the windows - they are also claimed to pong.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Well, clearly (a) would limit the number of routes they could be used on. I don't really see why b, c or d would be any different from any other country, unless we postulate that the British wash less than people in other countries, or maybe that Britain has a wider ranger of cleanliness than other countries (presumably if everyone washes or no-one washes then everything evens out).

[asajeffrey.livejournal.com]

Point e) is even true over here, where Routemaster RIP is the "what funny foreigners" section on NPR. Repeat ad nauseum.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Well, there is a night of programmes about them on BBC4 at the moment and f***ing Robert ****ing Elms is dressed as a bus conductor (or was a few minutes ago which caused me to turn over and to come here to tell you that f***ing Robert ****ing Elms is dressed as a bus conductor).

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

If you look up the word "c*nt" in a dictionary, you should find a picture of f***ing Robert ****ing Elms. C*nt.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. His biog on the BBC website is particularly hateful:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/biographies/biogs/london/robertelms.shtml

"Robert was born in North London in the sunny summer of 1959. He was educated at Orange Hill Grammar School and Queens Park Rangers Football Club!

Robert progressed to the LSE where he studied modern history and political thought and numerous nightclubs where he studied dressing up and falling over."

Barforama.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Of course, the perfect biog for Elms is taken from Brass Eye, where Chris Morris is introducing Darcus Howe with a stream of ludicrously insulting invective (ending with something along the lines of "He's a worthless waste of blood, a wankstain of the first water, and widely assumed to be a cocoa-shunter" which draws a quiet, innocent, baffled "What's a cocoa-shunter?" from Howe), after which Morris looks at Howe and says "Oh God, I'm sorry, that's the one for Robert Elms".
If I have a spare moment, I'll transcribe it tonight.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Were Morris and Elms at GLR at the same time, I wonder?