Replacing the

Routemaster
How to undo Ken Livingstones
destruction of Londons
best ever bus

Edited by
Dean Godson
with a foreword by
Simon Jenkins
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Replacing
the Routemaster
How To Undo Ken Livingstones
Destruction of Londons
Best Ever Bus

edited by
Dean Godson
with a foreword by
Simon Jenkins
First published in October 2005 by Policy Exchange Limited

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Contents
Foreword 7
Simon Jenkins
Introduction 9
Dean Godson
1 The Politics of the Routemaster 16
Andrew Gilligan
2 Building the Son of Routemaster 30
Andrew Morgan
3 Appraising the Routemaster 41
Dominic Walley
4 The Ecology of the Routemaster 54
Zac Goldsmith
5 The Security of the Routemaster 60
Colin Cramphorn
6 The Aesthetic of the Routemaster 67
Kate Bernard
7 The Horror of the Bendy 74
Kate Hoey MP
Appendix 79
About the Authors

Kate Bernard is Features Editor of Tatler.

Colin Cramphorn is Chief Constable of West Yorkshire.
Andrew Gilligan is a Features Writer at the Evening Standard and Defence
and Diplomatic Editor of the Spectator.
Dean Godson is Research Director of Policy Exchange.
Zac Goldsmith is Editor of the Ecologist.
Kate Hoey is MP for Vauxhall, the constituency which includes Waterloo
Station
Simon Jenkins is a columnist for the Guardian and is a former Editor of the
Evening Standard and a board member of London Transport.
Andrew Morgan is a co-founder of the Routemaster Operators and Owners
Association and was chairman until earlier this year. He edited three
volumes of the Routemaster Handbook and is the author of "Working with
Routemasters".
Dominic Walley is Managing Economist at the Center for Economics and
Business Research Ltd and is one of Britain's leading transport economists.
Foreword
Simon Jenkins

The London bus ranks with the red telephone kiosk, the black cab
and the pillar box as icons of Britains capital city. Commercialism
has debased many with advertisements and overpainting. But the old
double-decker survives in its mostly red glory, beloved and
photographed by all. Nor was tradition confined to colour. Until
now, the essence of the bus was the experience of climbing aboard
and alighting. It was a civic ritual, an adventure, a taste of danger.
The rear open platform of the stately Routemaster was unique
among world buses.
Londoners live still in the vain belief that they are entitled to
govern themselves. Hence in every independent poll and in every
way they have declared their affection for rear-access Routemasters.
They appreciate their ease of loading and unloading. They like the
reassuring presence of a conductor.
Though the old throbbing, swaying RT vehicles have long gone,
their offspring, the Routemasters, have proved supremely popular.
8 Replacing the Routemaster

As a result, all major candidates at the 2000 mayoral elections,

including the winner, Ken Livingstone, pledged to keep them.
Livingstone has not kept his promise, although as this pamphlet
shows it was within his power to do so. He has capitulated to the
commercial and special interest groups which he was elected to face
down. A combination of health-and-safety dirigisme, the disabled
lobby and heavy salesmanship from big European bus companies
has inflicted on Londoners a sequence of poorly performing and
claustrophobic buses, including the new single-decker bendies. The
convenience and preference of the overwhelming majority is now to
be sacrificed for that of interest groups and minorities. The peoples
mayor has become the lobbyists mayor.
This pamphlet sets out the story and asks whether even at this
late hour, it is not too late to save this most popular of London
institutions.
Introduction
Dean Godson

The destruction of the Routemaster is one of the most controversial

decisions taken by Ken Livingstone and Transport for London since the
advent of a directly elected mayor. Yet despite the hundreds of articles
and thousands of words written on the subject not to mention the
excellent work done by campaigning organisations such as Save the
Routemaster as well as the Evening Standard the overwhelming
arguments in favour of its retention have never yet been consolidated
in one place in a way that is of enduring value to policy-makers, jour-
nalists and the public.
One of the remarkable things about the debate over the Routemaster
Londons much loved hop-on, hop-off double deckers complete with
conductor is that it is about much more than just a bus. It is highly
revealing about so many aspects of public policy in Britain today. The
first is the rising tide of the group rights agenda (or at least a particu-
larly extreme interpretation of it) which has overwhelmed key public
utilities and those who do business with them. This has been pushed to
the point that it no longer even serves the interests of many of its
10 Replacing the Routemaster

intended beneficiaries. The second is how small a role Londoners enjoy

in key decisions about their day to day lives especially when well paid
technocratic elites within those public utilities make accommodations
with lobbyists for group rights: truly a sign that the squeakiest wheel
gets the most grease. Third, how important it is that when power is
ostensibly devolved to localities that the structures are designed so that
politicians and civil servants can properly be held to account.
The proponents of group rights referred to here are, of course, the
representatives of the disability lobby. What an ascendancy they enjoy
within many of our public services! When writing an article on the
Routemaster for The Times (21 July, 2005 see the Appendix) I asked
the Transport and General Workers Union whether it would back the
retention of the bus. The answer, astonishingly, was no. Although
hundreds of TGWU members specifically, conductors had already
lost their jobs and many more were destined to do so with the advent
of a 100% single-manned bus fleet, the union nonetheless believes that
the interests of the workers must yield pride of place to the disability
lobbys singular reading of the concept of disabled rights. Likewise,
although Visit Britain should logically have a vested interest in the
survival of the Routemaster as part of the brand image of London, it
gave much the same answer as the TGWU.
As with so much of the group rights agenda, the disability lobby
made some of its most significant gains during the latter years of the
premiership of John Major Ken Livingstones friendly opponent
from their Lambeth Council days in the form of the Disability
Discrimination Act of 1995. And then, of course, there is the ever-
present shadow of EU health and safety regulations, further
endangering open platform buses. Like so many forms of consensus,
this consensus snuffs out debate and creates fear including, for
 Introduction 11

reasons that will be explained later, within the ranks of the disabled as
well. To give but one example of the climate of moral pressure: in a
notably ill-tempered reply to my Times article, the director of Surface
Transport at TfL, Peter Hendy even questioned whether, because I am
in favour of retaining Routemasters by now a tiny percentage of the
TfL bus fleet I am against disabled people gaining access to public
transport! (see the Appendix)
One of the delights of working for an independent think tank is that
one can subject such claims to scrutiny without fear of the conse-
quences. One manufacturer referred to in Andrew Morgans excellent
essay Building the Son of Routemaster: Some Real Alternatives
Which Transport for London Passed Up specifically refused to give us
a copy of their admirable blueprint for a new double-decker (or even to
tell us the name of the independent designer who drew it) lest TfL take
umbrage and they lose future orders. In his essay on The Politics of the
Routemaster, Andrew Gilligan of the Evening Standard perhaps the
most knowledgeable journalist writing on the subject further
describes the heavy-handed treatment of one employee who spoke out.
Many disability activists are also privately unhappy with the destruc-
tion of the Routemaster. Why? For the obvious reason that disability is
not synonymous with being in a wheelchair. To give but two examples:
it is by no means obvious that the loss of the conductor represents a
better deal for the blind or for someone who still walks, but with diffi-
culty, such as an MS sufferer. Yet whilst the interests of different
segments of the disabled lobby are not always identical (as in the case
of the Routemaster) those components nonetheless believe that their
collective interests are not served by falling out. Much better to present
a united face to Government. So a lowest common denominator
consensus is forged.
12 Replacing the Routemaster

In fact, the new buses too often do not properly cater for the interests
of wheelchair users either: as Kate Hoey, Labour MP for Vauxhall notes
in her essay The Horror of the Bendy, the latest breed of vehicles are
frequently so crowded that the disabled sometimes cannot board
(assuming the movable ramp is working). And then there is one unin-
tended consequence of this very expensive capital re-equipment
programme at around 200,000 per bus: now that the TfL fleet is
theoretically 100% accessible to the disabled, will all of the 32 London
boroughs continue to feel it necessary to fund far more useful conces-
sionary services to wheelchair users such as TaxiCard and Dial-a-Ride
which of course provide door-todoor delivery?
So for the sake of a thousand wheelchair journeys per day, six million
Londoners will lose their beloved Routemasters. Indeed, as Colin
Cramphorn, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, notes in his highly
original essay The Security of the Routemaster, much recent crimino-
logical research suggests that the demise of the authority figures
generally, such as the conductor, has made the public space much less
safe for everyone. TfL, of course, are not the sole villains here: the cost-
cutting imperatives of the Thatcher era were also responsible for the
demise of many Routemasters. And Zac Goldsmith shows in his analysis,
The Ecology of the Routemaster, that it remains the most environ-
mentally friendly of Londons big buses. Such contributions underline
the point that saving the Routemaster is scarcely a conventional left-
right, party political issue. Indeed, Kate Hoey, in her essay, notes that her
low-income constituents are as angry as anyone over the apparent
demise of the Routemaster and their replacement with Bendies.
Peter Hendy believes that the Routemasters iconic status is not
enough to warrant its continuation as a bus for the 21st century. Of
course, the Routemaster is iconic, and the urban aesthetic ought not to
 Introduction 13

be overlooked (see Kate Bernards charming essay on cultural and

historical matters). But even if beauty and grace in the shared
municipal space are irrelevant as some TfL managers seem to suggest
the fact remains that the Routemaster is a gloriously practical vehicle.
It represents an aspect of that concept which never enters TfLs
discourse: freedom. In this case, it means the liberty to jump on and off
when and where you want. Compare that to being trapped in traffic on
a hot single-manned bus on a summers day, fifty yards short of the
stop with a surly over-burdened driver refusing to let you off the bus
for your own safety. Indeed, I would use buses far more often if I
could still embark and disembark at will. Like so many Londoners, I
love the thought of being opportunistically able to hop on a stationary
Routemaster at a traffic light. How much revenue is lost through being
unable to do so? It is probably incalculable, but should have been taken
into account. Indeed, Dominic Walley points out in his essay just how
inadequate (and lacking in transparency) TfLs appraisal methodolo-
gies are. If an eminent transport economist has such difficulty in
obtaining the necessary information, what hope for the ordinary
citizen?
A recent personal experience further illustrates the problems with
the new buses. I boarded a No 10 a single-manned double decker
at Hyde Park Corner one Sunday night and reached inside my pocket
for my fare card. I could not find it. All I found was a one pound coin
and a ten pound note scarcely exotic denominations nowadays. The
minimum fare is 1.20. I duly offered the driver the 10. He refused it,
claiming he did not have the change. He then refused the one pound
coin as obviously insufficient. In the old days, a conductor would have
let me on and if he did not have the change would have told me to pay
when he obtained coins from other passengers at subsequent stops.
14 Replacing the Routemaster

Instead, the driver ordered me off and told me to buy a ticket from
a machine at the stop and to get the next bus. The ticket machine was
working (although many do not) but of course unlike machines on the
Underground they do not give change a point which the driver must
have known when he instructed me to get off. In the course of all this,
other passengers were delayed whilst I argued with the driver
something that would not have happened if a driver still did the driving
and a conductor did the conducting, as on a Routemaster. I was left an
angry dissatisfied customer, and the bus company lost a 1.20 fare.
How many other taxpayers are similarly inconvenienced? Again, how
much revenue is lost in this way?
Peter Hendy cites a bevvy of statistics to show how the number of
bus journeys in London is rising sure proof, he says that consumers
are happy. The truth is that millions of us have to use buses and
would be obliged to ride them even if TfL contracts specified that we
all had to travel in open-air cattle trucks (incidentally, cattle trucks
would certainly be better ventilated than the Bendies in July and
August or the single-manned double deckers, with their boiling hot
engines at the rear of the ground floor). A massive change has been
made to the urban landscape with hardly any democratic accounta-
bility. The legislation creating the mayoralty also gave to the
incumbent the power to appoint the TfL Board and it left the
Greater London Assembly largely impotent to prevent such moves.
The London Transport Users Committee, the official consumers
watchdog has feebly acquiesced. The creation of an elected mayor
was supposed to bring Government closer to the people. Instead,
Londoners enjoy about as much say in practice over a crucial part of
the mayors work as the residents of such remote Crown dependen-
cies as Diego Garcia.
 Introduction 15

Our aim? To persuade all of the mayoral candidates for the next city-
wide contest in 2008 to pledge to maintain existing Routemasters and
to build a son of Routemaster that will be as logical an evolution
from the old design as the new London taxis are from their predeces-
sors. As Andrew Morgan shows in his essay, it is not beyond the wit of
humankind to devise something that reconciles the interests of the
fully able-bodied and the disabled and that is good-looking street
furniture as well. And, if we are successful in pushing the topic to the
top of the agenda well, who knows? Maybe Ken Livingstone, who
began his mayoralty re-commissioning Routemasters, might just do
another U turn. Were that so, we would certainly applaud him. Better
the sinner that repenteth.
One of the most pleasurable aspects of working on this pamphlet
have been the spontaneous expressions of support from inside and
outside the world of public policy. I would particularly like to thank
Andrew Gilligan for his enthusiasm and encouragement; Andrew
Morgan for his professorial authority; Zac and Ben Goldsmith and
Robin Birley for their friendship and inspiration over the years; Lucy
Ferry, Colette Hiller of Save the Routemaster for her time and good-
will; Joanne Cash for her sage and highly professional counsel; Matt
Smith and Janan Ganesh, two outstanding interns, for their unstinting
help; and to Nicholas Boles and his deputy, Jesse Norman, conductors-
in-chief of the Policy Exchange orchestra, for understanding the
importance of the Routemaster issue and for helping to keep it main-
stream despite Transport for Londons efforts to marginalise
discussion. That is surely what think tanks are for.
The Politics of the Routemaster
Andrew Gilligan

ONLY some ghastly dehumanised moron, said the Mayor of

London, Ken Livingstone, would want to get rid of the
Routemaster.1 That was in 2001. Two years later, in case we had
misunderstood, Mr Livingstone pledged: I will save the
Routemaster.2 Almost exactly two years after that, the final survivors
of Londons regular-service Routemasters will trundle into the depot
for the last time, doubtless in a convoy of three.
The Mayor and his director of surface transport, Peter Hendy, are,
as we shall see, sensitive about their own personal convoy of broken
promises. But it is possible, too, to detect a certain impatience. Why
is everyone so angry, they ask? After all, its only a bus. Raise your
eyes, protests Mr Hendy, to the widely recognised success story of
the rejuvenation of Londons bus network; dont let sentimental

1 See, for example, Ross Lydall in the Evening Standard, 21 June 2005
2 Speech to London Region CBI, 2 December 2003, reported in Evening Standard, 3 Dec 2003.
 The Politics of the Routemaster 17

affection get in the way of an acceptable public service; save your

pamphlets for issues of consequence.3
Yet the Routemaster has always been more than a bus. Its fans have
always been more than mere sentimentalists. And, as this chapter
argues, its fate most certainly is an issue of consequence. Just as the
Routemaster symbolises Britain to the world, so too does it tell us
something important about our politics.
At its birth, the Routemaster symbolised an age of public-service
idealism: a conviction made flesh, or at least aluminium, that
something in the public realm should be the best thing possible,
painstakingly and precisely crafted for the job it did, an object to
grace the city it served.
During its life, so completely did it succeed in those aims that it has
seen off five generations of new and shiny successors. Its age leads
some to think it an anachronism on a par with the steam engine or the
policemans pointy helmet. In fact, for the specific role it performs, it
remains the most efficient and the most practical bus ever made.
And in the manner of its death, the Routemaster shows how, in
modern Britain, something which works and is loved can be
replaced by something which fails and is hated, for reasons which are
entirely unnecessary.

* * *

When London Transport introduced the RM in 1956, it was after

two years of market research and prototypes, with customers
consulted at all stops along the route. Every detail was thought

3 Peter Hendy letter to Policy Exchange, 1 August 2005. See appendix

18 Replacing the Routemaster

about, and every detail was tested on passengers, which is why nearly
every detail is right. There are clear lines of sight, comfortable seats,
effective ventilation, handrails in all the right places, and virtually no
conflict between the paths of passengers going upstairs and those
going downstairs. There is both speedy boarding, and sufficient
seating. The Routemaster is a democratically-influenced bus.
The decline of the public service ethos, the lack of care, or thought,
or consultation of passengers is, by contrast, immediately clear to
anyone who steps inside a new-generation bus. The seats are hard, set
on different levels, and some face backwards. The sightlines are poor.
The colours are jarring; the air is filled with high-pitched beeping
noises. Ventilation barely exists; in summer, these vehicles are saunas,
especially at the back of the lower deck where the engine is located.
The buses are badly-sprung, and brake sharply, throwing their passen-
gers around. On double-deckers, the flow of passengers trying to leave
the upper deck cuts across those trying to board on the lower. The
upper deck is vandalised and filthy in a way no conductor-supervised
bus ever could be. Slow, lumbering, and hard to manoeuvre, the new
buses are almost comically unsuited to central Londons streets.
Survey after survey shows that what passengers want most of all is
a seat, but this is the most fundamental thing that new-generation
buses fail to provide. Modern double-deckers have as few as 16 seats
downstairs. And a bendy bus, though it takes up nearly twice as
much road space as a Routemaster, has a third fewer seats. Transport
for London press releases say that the bendies carry 60 more
people than the RM. What they neglect to mention is that every one
of those 60, and more besides, is forced to stand.
To achieve the same speed of movement with a one-person bus
that the RM managed as a matter of course, a vast and costly infra-
 The Politics of the Routemaster 19

structure has had to be erected. Passengers in central London are no

longer allowed to pay their fares on the bus, because without a
conductor it slows things down too much. Instead, 1,000 ticket
machines have been installed at bus stops across town, at a cost of
more than 3 million.
Astonishingly often broken or vandalised, never able to give direc-
tions or change, described even by the Mayor himself as completely
duff 4, the machines make a very poor substitute indeed for a bus
conductor. The streets of the West End have a poignant new tableau:
the enraged bus passenger, trying to fish his money out of the ticket
machine thats swallowed it, as the bus he wanted to catch pulls
away.
It is not difficult to imagine what Londoners would have said
about all this. That, no doubt, is why they were never properly asked.
Not only were the new vehicles largely untested on passengers, no
passenger surveys at all appear to have been done certainly,
according to TfLs press office, none have been published - for routes
which have been converted from Routemasters to bendy buses. You
wonder whether they havent come out with anything because there
might be less favourable reactions, says Alan Millar, editor of the
trade magazine, Buses.5
TfL bases its claim that the withdrawal of Routemasters is popular
on just two surveys, of 350 passengers each, carried out more than
two years ago on the 436 and 453, two bendy routes in south-east
London. The bendies outscored both Routemasters and modern
double-deckers on every criterion including, somewhat suspi-

4 Peoples Question Time, Greater London Assembly, 2 March 2004.

5 Interview with author, August 2004.
20 Replacing the Routemaster

ciously, the number of seats.6 But the 436 and the 453 were entirely
new services, introduced as supplements, not replacements, for the
existing double-deck routes. Passengers, in short, had a choice; the
survey only counted those passengers who had chosen the bendies.
And a brand-new service is not something anyone could reasonably
object to.
The withdrawal of the Routemaster has turned into the most
emotive issue in Londons transport for many years, spawning a
petition with thousands of signatures, hundreds of letters and emails
to the London Evening Standard, and the formation of at least two
pressure groups. But in this debate the bodies supposed to represent
the voices of the public have been all but silent.
The board of Transport for London, composed of figures selected
to represent the public interest, never discussed the subject,
according to two of its members.7 The London Transport Users
Committee, the statutory body set up specifically to represent the
views of passengers, accepted the change after a perfunctory discus-
sion with a London Buses manager.8 The LTUC, its press officer
admitted, made no attempt to ascertain the views of passengers on
the subject. Nor did it commission any of its own research into the
validity of TfLs claims, several of which were, at best, questionable.9
Not only were passengers never asked about their brave new bus
world, in several cases they were never even told. TfL is known for its
excellent publicity material, with even minor changes announced

6 Bendy buses win passenger approval, TfL press release, 1 August 2003.
7 Professor Stephen Glaister and Susan Kramer, interviews with author, August 2004.
8 At its meeting of 16 April 2003.
9 Interview with author, August 2004. The questionable claims included one that it would cost
an extra 350 million to retain Routemasters.
 The Politics of the Routemaster 21

through posters on the buses, signs posted at bus stops, and a press
release on the London Buses website. But some of the Routemaster
conversions of 2003 and early 2004 were not announced at all. The
first that passengers found out about it was when a new bus turned
up at their stop in the morning.
After the Evening Standard suggested that the authorities were
ashamed of what they were up to, TfL began a consultation on
perhaps the most controversial Routemaster-to-bendy conversion of
all, the 73. But it appears little more than a sham. Two weeks before the
consultation closed, TfL officials told the Save The 73 campaign that
the new bendy buses for the 73 had already been ordered.10
TfL also ran a big publicity drive on the 73, with posters and leaflets
bearing a picture of a bendy bus and the slogan Better from every
angle. Sadly, this claim has now been banned by the Advertising
Standards Authority on the grounds that it is false.11 With only 2,009
seats available in the peak hour, as against 3,960 under the old
Routemaster regime, the new 73 was not better from every angle at all.
Lack of regard for the facts continues to play a part in the campaign
against the Routemaster. In August 2005, Mr Hendy described claims
that fare-dodging was greater on bendy buses as profoundly
untrue.12 Exactly one day later, internal TfL reports obtained under
the Freedom of Information Act showed that the rate of fare evasion
on bendy buses was 7.3 per cent, against 3 per cent on other vehicles.13
The studies were done in November 2004 and March 2005.

10 Meeting between Save The 73 campaign and London Buses, 17 February 2004; minutes on
campaign website.
11 See ASA adjudication 11/05/05, http://www.asa.org.uk
12 Letter to Policy Exchange, 1 August 2005.
13 Evening Standard, 2 August 2005.
22 Replacing the Routemaster

In summer 2004, motoring journalists, including the Evening

Standards David Williams, were invited by TfL to a road-trial
showdown, test-driving both a Routemaster and a bendy-bus on a
private track in Bedfordshire. Hot, noisy, and greasy, wrote
Williams after his turn in the Routemaster. No wonder drivers fight
over the keys to the bendy-bus.14 Others came to similar conclusions
a PR result for the forces of change.
What Williams and the other reporters could not have known is
that the test was scarcely representative. The Routemaster they
were given to drive, number 2760, was the only bus out of nearly
400 in the London fleet at that time which still retained its original
1960s engine. Every other RM in the fleet has been re-equipped,
some twice, with quieter, cleaner engines, modernised interiors
and improved driver conditions. Because of its uniquely unre-
formed nature, RML 2760 is never used in normal passenger
work. Its only use is for the occasional charter and in this case,
for bolstering TfLs case before journalists.
In the West End, last redoubt of the Routemaster, a sign has been
placed on every bus stop saying: Buy tickets before boarding on all
routes. In fact, passengers on Routemaster services are not required
to buy their tickets before boarding they can still pay the
conductor. But TfL wants to ensure that the conductor no longer has
any work to do. When I interviewed Mr Hendy for the Evening
Standard last year, this practice produced the following illuminating
exchange:

14 Evening Standard, 6 August 2004.

 The Politics of the Routemaster 23

Q: Why have you got signs at all the bus stops saying something thats
not true?

A: Because wed like people to pay before they board.

Q: But the sign says youve got to.

A: Well, why not?

Q: Because its not true.

A: I dont want people to pay on board. I want people to buy a ticket

before they get on, because its a huge benefitit gives us the oppor-
tunity of replacing RMs.15

TfL has been quick of the mark to stifel debate. Colin Curtis, the
President of the Routemaster Operators and Owners
Association, was threatened that if the RMOOA criticised the
decision to scrap the Routemaster, then all the London bus
companies could pull out of its grand fiftieth anniversary
Routemaster rally in Finsbury Park last year. Any suggestion of
sparking an Evening Standard campaign or whipping up public
support for [the Routemasters] retention would be disastrous
[for you], they were warned.16
Most disturbingly of all, a London bus driver, Stephen Morrey,
was threatened with disciplinary action after mildly criticising

15 Peter Hendy interview with author, July 2004.

16 Interview with the then RMOOA Chairman, Andrew Morgan, with author, August 2004.
24 Replacing the Routemaster

modern buses on the Routemaster Exchange website. In a statement,

John Trayner, the operations director of Mr Morreys employer,
London General, said:

Mr Morrey posted a note on an Internet bulletin board. As a result of

a personal complaint from Peter Hendy, we investigated his claim and
found it was incorrect. He was called in for a fact-finding enquiry and
told there would be further action against him, but he would have not
have been sacked.17

With the threat of disciplinary action hanging over him, Mr Morrey

suffered panic attacks and stress. He was prescribed anti-depressant
tablets by his doctor, which meant he was unable to drive his bus.
After four months off sick, he was told to return to work or be
sacked. He was medically unable to return, so he was dismissed.
Mr Morrey, who is hoping to return to work as a bus driver,
refused to speak about his case. But his friend, Barry Freestone, said:

Its completely outrageous, a disgrace. It hit him right between the

eyes. He didnt do anything wrong. What he said was very moderately
worded. He used his own email address, did it in his own time, and
did not criticise Hendy personally. 18

Perhaps the reason why TfL feels it needs to employ these sorts of tactics
is that its legitimate case against the Routemaster is weak. With the
growth of pre-paid tickets, Routemasters have long been withdrawn

17 Interview with author, August 2004.

18 Interview with author, August 2004.
 The Politics of the Routemaster 25

from the suburbs of London. But for decades, successive London

transport authorities have repeatedly considered and rejected the alter-
natives to Routemaster operation on the busier city centre routes. Bendy
buses, although quick to board, had inadequate seating. Modern
double-deckers, although having adequate seating, were too slow to
board. So, after declining steeply in the 1970s and 1980s, the number of
Routemasters in London has been virtually stable from 1989 onwards.
As recently as between 2000 and 2003, TfL actually bought 49 more
RMs on the second-hand market, saying that they were the most cost-
effective way of improving services.We can put three fully-refurbished
and modernised Routemasters, running on the latest low-sulphur
diesel, on the streets of London for the price of one brand new bus,
said Dave Wetzel, chair of London Buses and vice-chair of TfL.19
Even Mr Hendy now admits that the Routemaster is not being
scrapped for reasons of cost. It is only a bit more expensive than a
modern bus, he says:20 although there are strong arguments for
saying that it is actually cheaper. TfL is also unable to argue,
although it still sometimes tries to, that the Routemaster is worn out.
The engines of every vehicle in the fleet, with the exception of RML
2760, have been replaced, some more than once. The saloons have
been refurbished, repanelled, rewired and re-lit. Phil Margrave,
director of engineering for one of the main London bus operators,
says the RM can remain in frontline passenger service without diffi-
culty for another decade.21 Mr Hendy himself now admits they will
no doubt last forever.22

19 TfL press release, 22 September 2000.

20 Interview with author, July 2004.
21 Buses Focus, issue 31, summer 2004.
22 Letter to Policy Exchange, op.cit.
26 Replacing the Routemaster

TfL is unable even to argue that the Routemaster is less fuel-

efficient than its major rivals. Remarkably, according to its own
figures, the bus does 8 miles to the gallon, against 5.5mpg for a
modern double-decker,23 and is actually quieter than any of its
successors. It complies with all the latest emission standards. Mr
Margrave says it is easier to maintain.24 (See Zac Goldsmiths essay
The Ecology of the Routemaster for more on this.
TfL has only two valid factual arguments against the Routemaster. It
says that the bus is not accessible to the disabled, citing its legal obli-
gations under the Disability Discrimination Act. It also claims that the
Routemaster is more dangerous than modern buses, since passengers
sometimes fall off the open platform at the back while the vehicle is
moving.
These arguments fail the test not of truth, but of proportionality.
Neither is untrue, but nor is either a remotely significant enough
problem to justify a change of policy. The number of passengers
killed by falling off the back of a Routemaster averages between one
and two a year usually because the person has disobeyed the
explicit safety instructions displayed warning them not to stand on
the platform.25 The Routemaster is perfectly safe if used safely;
indeed, as those figures suggest, it is pretty safe even if used unsafely!
The Routemaster is undeniably inaccessible to wheelchair users,
but nearly every other bus in London, more than 98 per cent of the
fleet, is fully accessible to them. Nearly every route served by RMs
was and is covered over all or nearly of its length by frequent, alter-

23 Figures from TfL press office.

24 Buses Focus, op.cit.
25 Figures from TfL press office.
 The Politics of the Routemaster 27

native services operated by accessible buses. The accessible alterna-

tive to the formerly Routemaster-operated 14, the 414, runs every
eight minutes. The accessible alternative to the 36, the 436, runs
every seven minutes, and so on.
Despite this near-universal provision for the disabled, which has
now been in place for nearly three years, there is no evidence that
wheelchair-bound (and other disabled) passengers actually want to use
buses. While the use of Dial-a-Ride, subsidised taxis and private cars by
disabled travellers is substantial, the number of wheelchair users on the
London bus network remains close to nil, around a thousand out of six
million passengers each day. And disabled passengers groups, while
certainly pleased that the RM is going, say that its demise was not a
high priority for them.26 The Disability Discrimination Act, inciden-
tally, will not apply to the Routemaster until 2017.
Neither the safety nor the disability arguments is new; both were
considered, and rejected, when TfL decided to expand the Routemaster
fleet in 2000. The practical and legal position has not changed in that
time. The men who are withdrawing the Routemaster are relying on
arguments which they themselves dismissed only a few years ago.
TfL says a wider group of mobility impaired users, the elderly, will
also benefit from the arrival of more accessible buses. Elderly groups
beg to differ. Elizabeth Timms, spokeswoman for Help the Aged, points
out that there is more than one way to achieve accessibility. For the
elderly, having a conductor to help you board is a big advantage. And
as well as the accessibility issue, there is safety. Elderly people feel safer
on a bus where there is someone to protect them.27
26 Interview with Faryal Velmi, DaRT campaign, August 2004.
27 Interview August 2004.
28 Replacing the Routemaster

* * *

Since so many of TfLs reasons for scrapping the Routemaster feel

like little more than excuses, there has been a great deal of searching
around for the real reasons. Perhaps the best indication of the
mindset inside TfL comes from Andrew Braddock, its former head
of access and mobility: Any bus which is quirky and old is iconic,
especially in a country which is obsessed with history and Empire
and has no real idea of its place in the modern world and its place in
Europeyou have to ask the serious question why the good old
double decker only exists in Britain and not in the rest of Europe?28
The Routemasters crime, in short, is not that it is ineffective; it is
that it is unfashionable. It does not fit with the modern, sleek,
concrete-and-glass Euro-city that Mr Livingstone wants to create;
never mind that this city exists only inside the Mayors head. Like so
many bureaucrats and politicians, they really believe they know what
is best for us. They know so well that they need not trouble to
examine the actual performance of their chosen solution. They
know so well that they need not trouble to ask us what we actually
think and want.
It is easy to understand Mr Hendys and Mr Livingstones confi-
dence. With passenger numbers up 40 per cent, and hundreds more
red buses on the streets, they have made a major success of the bus
service during their five years in charge of it. But that success is not
because people prefer the new buses to the Routemaster, or because
they work better than the Routemaster does. Most of the growth
took place before the latest phase of Routemaster withdrawals began,

28 Quoted in Travis Elborough, The Bus We Loved, pp156-7, Granta, 2005.

 The Politics of the Routemaster 29

and has now, indeed, started to level off. It is because the Mayor has
spent hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money to slash
fares and increase the frequency of services. It is because he has
introduced a congestion charge which discourages people from
driving into central London.
The destruction of the Routemaster may rank low on the scale of
global injustice. But it does exemplify the failings of our modern
state: the political box-ticking; the disconnect between the priorities
of the rulers and the priorities of the ruled; the bureaucratic
arrogance; the instinctive recourse to bullying and deceit; the failure
of institutions supposed to hold decision makers to account; the
witless pursuit of fashion, and the indifference to function; and the
way in which lobbies representing almost no-one can trump the
wishes and interests of the wider community.
It exemplifies the dehumanisation of which Mr Livingstone once
spoke: the preference for often half-baked technocratic solutions
over human solutions. TfLs mantras, accessibility and security,
could have been provided to almost all bus users by a human being
called a conductor. Instead they are to be provided by CCTV
cameras, non-functioning ticket machines, and a bus that will, if
youre lucky and the electrics are working, lower a ramp for you.
How our aspirations have been reduced in the last 50 years.
Building the Son of Routemaster:
Some Real Alternatives Which
Transport for London Passed Up
Andrew Morgan

In the summer of 2000, the face of transport in London changed

irrevocably. A Mayor was elected for the whole city, namely Ken
Livingstone. With his inauguration, he brought pledges that the
Routemaster would remain on Londons streets. Gone were the
years of uncertainty where the future of any bus route in London
would only be secure for the length of a contract; not only was
there now a commitment to the future investment in passenger
travel in London, but also for the Routemaster.1 A properly

1 From 1985 to 2000, London Transport (LT) offered individual routes to tender to potential
operators. From 1996, the Routemaster operated routes joined this process. In July 2000,
London Transport was replaced by Transport for London (TfL); although TfL had a much
wider remit than LT to include the London Underground, Dockland Light Railway, Victoria
Coach Station, London Trams, London River Services, Dial-a-Ride and Street Management.
London Buses, as part of TfL, is responsible for the planning of bus routes and the monitoring
service quality, and all bus services are operated under contract to London Buses, largely by
private sector companies.
 Building the Son of Routemaster 31

planned strategy was being formulated, rather than short term

solutions. Or so it was believed.
Within two months of the poll, Routemasters began to be re-
acquired for use in the capital by London Bus Services (LBSL),
part of Transport for London.2 This was in fulfilment of a key
Livingstone election pledge. A press conference was held on the
22nd September 2000 to announce to reinforce the message that it
was TfLs intention that Routemaster operations in London were
to continue for many years. In a statement released for this press
conference, TfL announced that the refurbishment programme of
these newly acquired vehicles would allow for the refurbishment
of existing buses to be carried out where necessary without
causing disruption. The TfL press release finished with the
statement Open platform buses do not contravene any current
EU safety regulations.
An ambitious refurbishment programme was announced after
which they were to be put into service on existing London
Routemaster operated bus routes. This duly took place and, by the
time of the introduction of the initial Congestion Charge zone in
February 2003, forty-three vehicles had been refurbished and a
further six were to be completed; all were allocated to existing routes
to enable frequency increases to take place to the existing bus
services.3

2 Sales of Routemasters from London Transport commenced in 1982 and from the mid-1980s
many were acquired by operators around the British Isles as a competitive tool for use in the
newly privatised and de-regulated world of bus operation. In 1994, the majority of those
remaining with operators in London passed into private ownership upon the completion of
the privatisation of the London bus operating companies.
32 Replacing the Routemaster

Suddenly, with a new air of confidence, the London

Routemaster fleet seemed to be safe for a further ten years service.
Modern technologies helped. Cummins Diesel UK had developed
a B-series engine with a capacity of 5.9 litres the smallest
engine to ever go into a Routemaster. It nevertheless offered more
performance than most of the previous engine types fitted; and
thanks to a modern fuel system and turbocharger technology, it
promised fuel savings into the bargain without sacrificing dura-
bility or day-to-day reliability.
This was the first ever re-engining of a Routemaster with an alter-
native gearbox, and the first to add a torque converter transmission
into the driveline.4 Previous re-engining programmes in the late
1980s with Cummins C-series engines and Iveco engines, and in the
late 1990s with Scania engines all retained the original mid-
mounted gearbox installation.5
A diesel oxidation catalyst supplied by Engine Control Systems
was fitted as standard but this conversion offered the flexibility that
a particulate trap could be fitted if further particulate matter (PM)

3 At the 1st February 2003, the peak vehicle requirement (pvr) for Routemaster operated routes
in London had been increased to 574 from a total of 509 in July 2000 when TfL came into
existence; therefore an increase of 12.8% was required although in reality it is noteworthy that
there were actually insufficient vehicles in London to achieve this total and newer doored
vehicles were substituting by this time.
4 A torque converter is a device for transmitting and amplifying torque from the engine to the
road wheels. The drive line is the mechanism that transmits power from the engine to the
driving wheels of a motor vehicle.
5 The original gearbox as fitted to the Routemaster when built was a direct selection epicyclic or
Wilson type, controlled by electro-pneumatic valves and air pistons for each gear band. It was
carried entirely by the body floor framework on rubber mounting being located between the
second and third crossmembers.
 Building the Son of Routemaster 33

reduction was required.6 At the end of December 2000 it became

known that Cummins had been awarded the contract to re-engine
Routemasters for LBSL and Transport for London. Cummins made
significant investment at their Wellingborough facilities to handle
this work as part of Transport for Londons plans.
After some thirty-three vehicles, the transmission was updated
with an electronic Allison gearbox. An option of a Telma retarder to
be fitted was also available, if required by the operator; this assisted
the life of brake linings.7
A Euro 3 engine package was developed by Cummins for the
Routemaster; a single vehicle was completed in late 2002 and entered
service alongside the initial Euro 2 conversions on route 13. This was
probably the most technically advanced Routemaster ever to enter
service; with an electronic engine control and fully electronic
gearbox, those that have travelled on this Routemaster have all been
duly impressed.
In total some ninety-six Routemasters in London were re-engined
by Cummins by the end of 2003, although a third of these were
withdrawn in 2004. This represented 14.7% of the London
Routemaster fleet in 2003. This programme was cut back from a
proposed total of 180 vehicles by TfL in 2002.8

6 A diesel oxidation catalyst (or DOC) is effective for the control of carbon monoxide (CO),
hyrdrocarbons (HC), odor causing compounds, and the soluble organic fraction (SOF) of
particulate matter (PM10). Engine Control Systems (ECS) is a division of Canadian company
Lubrizol Corporation.
7 Telma Retarder is the worlds leading manufacturer of electromagnetic frictionless braking systems.
8 It was detailed in the minutes from the TfL Board meeting from the 19th September 2002 that
The project to upgrade engines of Routemaster buses to reduce emissions and deliver envi-
ronmental benefits has been reduced to 100 conversions from 180 due to a lack of spare parts.
This problem of spare parts has never been backed up with any evidence.
34 Replacing the Routemaster

In early February 2001 it became known that Marshalls of

Cambridge had won the contract for the refurbishment of the
bodywork from London Bus Services Ltd. Completed vehicles
entered service from the end of June.
The refurbishment programme undertaken by Marshalls included a
full re-wire, re-trim of the floor, side panels, seats, a new heating
system, hopper windows in lieu of the original quarter drop wind-
down type, fluorescent lighting, full repaint, CCTV cameras fitted, a
new cab dashboard layout, new lights all round, and DiPTAC style
yellow handrails throughout. In total forty-three Routemasters were
completed by Marshalls in 2001/2002. The final six Routemasters were
completed for TfL by Arriva between early 2003 and March 2004.9
During the Summer of 2001, Marshall Bus UK (as they had
become known) were expecting an order to refurbish Routemasters
for other London bus operating companies; but this order never
came and it was soon obvious that the Routemaster was quietly
falling from favour with those in power at TfL. This was all very
strange considering that the July 2001 TfL Transport Strategy was
still pro Routemasters and the conductor.
Go-Aheads London subsidiary London General10 looked into
various alternative engines and fitted a Caterpillar unit. They even
fitted an LPG engine although the commitment for this one-off

9 Arriva plc is one of the leading transport services organisations in Europe; they are based in
north east England in Sunderland and are one of the top three largest bus operating companies
in the UK. They currently operate 19.31% of all bus services in London for Transport for
London.
10 London General is a subsidiary Go Ahead based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is one of the top
five operating companies in the UK. They currently operate 17.30% of all bus services in
London for Transport for London.
 Building the Son of Routemaster 35

seemed to be very limited as it did not remain in service very long.

Perhaps it was due to the fact that by the time it entered service,
Transport for Londons enthusiasm for the Routemaster had disap-
peared. However, this example is yet another illustration of the
flexibility of the Routemaster and how easy it is to modify and fit
other engine types to the existing vehicle design.
London General also carried out the refurbishment of twenty-
two Routemasters after the re-award of the route 14 contract from
September 2002 with the intention that they would remain in
service until at least September 2007; yet they were all withdrawn
in July 2005. This programme was in addition to the one
completed for the route 36 contract and also by Arriva for the route
159 contract. The latter refurbished vehicles were sold in July 2004
at the insistence of TfL that the slightly larger 72-seat vehicles were
retained until the end of the route 159 contract in December 2005.
The retained vehicles had not been refurbished since 1992-1994
and had Iveco engines fitted in a programme over fifteen years
previously.
In the 2000 Mayoral election campaign, Ken Livingstone also
pledged to develop a suitable replacement for the Routemaster; and
the project name Child of Routemaster was born, and with this in
mind the refurbishment programme for the existing Routemaster
fleet, as well as the acquisition of additional vehicles, was understood
to be a sensible stop gap until the replacement vehicle was available.
It was understood that the new Child of Routemaster had to be
low-floor to allow wheelchair access, but with a conductor.
Of course, with this ten year time period to get the design right for
London, and with the Disability Discrimination Act deadline of
2017 still some seventeen years away, there was no rush to replace the
36 Replacing the Routemaster

existing Routemaster fleet.11 Or so everybody thought at the end of

2000.
There is no known evidence of what Transport for London did to
achieve their promise of developing a suitable replacement for the
Routemaster but there were several alternatives on offer that could
have been developed to suit TfLs own requirements. It is understood
that TfL was offered these alternatives but chose to push on regardless
with the off-the-shelf current early generation low-floor one person
operated double deckers or bendy buses. Each batch of vehicles
delivered seemed to vary in some way or another and there was little
or no commonality or standardisation across all of the fleets across
London. This standardisation was a distinct advantage in the
Routemaster era particularly for the elderly, infirm and partially
sighted for providing a standard vehicle that would give confidence to
the passengers who knew where every step or handrail was positioned.
From 2000, the retired former London Transport chief Engineer
Colin Curtis OBE, together with Edgar Coleman, marketed a double
decker design by the name of Q-Master. This was similar to an existing
design but brought up-to-date with current suppliers and with side-
mounted engine placed under the stairs. In addition, it had many
common Routemaster components although with flat floor
throughout. The design was to be modular to allow flexibility of the
entrance / exit and staircase position, and would have sub-frames to
support the mechanical units. Other design features included familiar
Routemaster characteristics such as independent suspension, trailing
link rear sub-frame with coil suspension, power hydraulic brakes and

11 The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 states that all double deck buses in the UK must be
accessible by the 1st January 2017.
 Building the Son of Routemaster 37

fluid transmission. It was noteworthy in being low weight (9t verses

11.5t i.e. the Q-Master would be some three quarters the weight of
current double deck vehicles) and therefore would be likely to accom-
plish an estimated 10% gain in fuel economy.
The initial Q-Master design had its origins back in the early 1970s
when London Transport looked at similar proposals, under the
project names of XRM and QRM. Possibly a factor against this
design was the 1960s style schematic drawings produced to illustrate
the design. A 21st century marketing exercise could have brought the
cosmetic appearance of this design up-to-date and have possible
made it more appealing.
It is known that several meetings took place with Transport for
London from 2000 to discuss this design, but no commitment from
them was forthcoming. Unfortunately, being a private design,
funding of at least 2m was required so that a prototype vehicle
could be built, tested and proved. This funding was never available
and no backing from a manufacturer or operator was ever received
for this design including, sadly, from TfL. Therefore no prototype
vehicle has ever been built.
It is believed that Transport for London were more interested in
backing existing designs that had already been developed into
production rather than producing a home-grown product specifi-
cally for the streets of London.12 Manufacturers in Germany,

12 Transport for London specified one person operated double deckers and generally these have
been supplied as British built Dennis Tridents and polish built Volvo B7 vehicles, all with
British built bodywork. For the Bendy type of vehicles, the existing design of Mercedes Citaro
vehicles have been delivered to all operators and existing designs from Volvo and Scania that
could have been supplied with UK sourced bodywork were not chosen. TfL state that Dennis
would not build a Bendybus for London and that only Mercedes had the production capacity
to take-on the London orders.
38 Replacing the Routemaster

including Mercedes and MAN, receive subsidies to assist in the

development of new products. However, in London we are still
awaiting to see a fully low-floor double decker, never mind one that
is flexible enough to accommodate a rear platform or entrance.
Meanwhile, at roughly the same time (in early 2000), Leeds based
manufacturer Optare made it known of its intent to complete its
secret design for an all-low-floor double decker that would be
available in late 2002. What was special about this design was that it
was to be side-engined with the engine positioned behind the driver
and under the stairs. The front doorway would be wide enough to
accept a wheel chair and if required a further entrance at the rear
with doors that could be locked in the open position if so required;
and thus a rear entrance bus could be possible.
It was rumoured in early 2001 that bus body builder East
Lancashire Coachbuilders of Blackburn was working on a similar
concept. Unlike the integral design from Optare it was thought to be
utilising a DAF / VDL chassis which is already available in Europe.
This chassis already had a side-mounted engine albeit on the UK
nearside, so would require redesigning to suit the UK market.
The Transdev Enviro 200 was a new fully low floor 10.4 metre
midibus with an entrance at front and rear; it first appeared in
completed form in 2003 at the Coach & Bus show and trials in
London commenced in 2005. However, so far, Transport for London
has been unenthusiastic. With this layout, Transdev announced that
it would be possible for a double deck vehicle to be built if a
customer or operator so wished.
Interestingly, although these are the most recent likely contenders
for a suitable Routemaster replacement, there have been some other
notable ideas since London Transports own design team was
 Building the Son of Routemaster 39

disbanded in the late 1980s. The first was in 1987 by a London Buses
subsidiary, Selkent. Their Alternative Crew Vehicle (ACV) was to
have been based upon on an ERF urban delivery low-frame 16t
chassis. With interest from the manufacturing industry, including
Northern Counties to build the bodywork, a prototype could have
been built. However, with no serious commitment from London
Transport and no funding being available at the time, a re-engining
programme was commenced for the remaining fleet of some 600-
700 Routemasters and then a refurbishment programme for the
500-strong 72-seat Routemaster (RML) fleet was undertaken
between 1992 and 1994.
In 1991, French transport design company, Quirin SA, submitted
a new design for a Routemaster to London Transport in the hope
that their design might be commissioned. However, whilst being
described at the time as adding a dash of something quintessentially
French: panache, it retained an open platform and high steps as well
as all the features of the existing familiar 1950s design.
The LoBUS urban bus concept was generated by Eric Woodcock
in the summer of 2000 following correspondence in the Ian Allan
Buses magazine. With a low-floor throughout and centre entrance /
exit, this vehicle would work well with Londons latest pay-before-
you-board ticketing systems. However, the front wheel drive and
small diameter twin rear axle would make it a new concept for buses
in the UK.
At the Canadian International Autoshow in 2004, Blake Cotterill,
a British design student from Coventry University, won a prestigious
second prize with a concept for a Routemaster for 2015. Numerous
21st century features were included such as an electrically powered
retractable glass sliding roof and dispensers for camera film, head-
40 Replacing the Routemaster

phones, and disposable cameras all with the idea of generating

revenue. Again it was proposed to be front wheel drive with space
saving single tyres, centre and rear entrance / exit, fully low-floor,
and have interactive screens so that the passengers always know
where they are. Also included would be places to store your approved
fold up bicycle. It would be powered by an electric hybrid unit
utilising a 6.7litre V6 bio-diesel driving through a continuously
variable transmission system with regenerative braking.
With Britain double deck bus market being controlled by orders
from London, as simply the vast majority of double deck buses are
built for London, the rest of the UK has to accept the London design
with only minor changes. Small batches are ordered and with no
backing from an operator or Transport for London themselves, the
prospect of a suitable replacement for the Routemaster possibly
the most exciting double deck bus design has still not been seen in
public. Realistically this seems more and more unlikely as the
demand from London for a new design of bus has gone with the
demise of the Routemaster fleet. However, an increased order of over
1000 vehicles could cover the whole of zone 1 in the central London
area and would provide benefits of this type of vehicle for other
routes as well. Therefore this new bus could still happen.
So the original pledges from Ken Livingstone in 2000 have been
broken . . . but the designs and the technology are there to build a
worthy successor to the Routemaster. The Bendies et al are not
inevitable!
Appraising the Routemaster
Methodological Shortcomings
In Transport for Londons Economic Analysis
Dominic Walley

Transport for London has decided to replace the Routemaster.

Critics argue that the Routemaster bus is not only a unique part of
British culture and heritage, but a practical and cost effective bus and
should stay in service.
The Mayor and Transport for London have performed a policy U-
turn. Whilst at first upgrading and refurbishing the Routemaster,
Transport for London has changed its mind and is now in the
process of replacing the Routemaster fleet with modern buses:
single-decker; double-decker; and bendybuses an 18 metre artic-
ulated bus with three sets of doors.
A capital scheme of this size should be the subject of a transport
appraisal to decide on the best option. Given the change in policy
and the controversy surrounding Routemaster replacement it is
essential that Transport for London publishes a full and transparent
42 Replacing the Routemaster

assessment of the Routemaster replacement programme.

Nevertheless, surprisingly little information has been published by
Transport for London on this subject and no publicly available
appraisal information at all.

Transport modelling and appraisal

Transport modelling and appraisal provide a framework for
assessing, scoring and weighing different transport options. It
should act as a fair arbiter of which is the best bus taking into
account how the travelling public respond to the different offers and
their impacts on the rest of the economy and society.

All new policies, programmes and projects, whether revenue, capital

or regulatory, should be subject to comprehensive but proportionate
assessment, wherever it is practicable, so as best to promote the public
interest.1

Appraisal is based on the modelled consequences of a transport

change. This transport change is usually described in terms of changes
to journey times, frequencies of services, reliability and other measures
of service quality. Within these, there is clearly scope to address many
of the arguments both for and against the Routemaster. For example
these include issues of: capacity, crowding and time spent waiting at
bus stops; time taken to stop, open doors and pick up and set down
passengers; and the convenience of being able to hop on and hop off

1 First sentence of first chapter of The Green Book, the Governments guide to appraisal in
central Government
 Appraising the Routemaster 43

the bus whenever it has stopped to shorten journeys. In practice, most

transport modelling only considers these factors in a fairly general way
and would probably only take into account changes in the frequency of
services and any route alterations which affect journey times. Much
less is known about customer preferences, especially between different
types of vehicles, and these are rarely incorporated within transport
models. Where they are included it is often only between clearly
different modes of transport (such as trams and buses). The conse-
quences of this are usually measured in terms of the number of
passengers using services, how far they travel and how long they take.
The appraisal takes into account all of the costs and benefits of
these consequences (such as the capital costs for new buses and the
benefit of higher frequencies reducing waiting times) and calculates
whether it is worth the money. An appraisal is only as comprehen-
sive as the modelling that supports it.

Current practice
Current practice in transport appraisal is based on a framework set
out in:

The Green Book: The Governments overarching appraisal

guidance for all forms of public spending. The latest version is the
2003 edition.
NATA: Simply, New Approach To Appraisal in transport,
launched in 1998
Transport Analysis Guidance: This grew out of the Governments
Guidance on the Methodology for Multimodal Studies and is now
a regularly updated living document on the internet
44 Replacing the Routemaster

Together, these describe how to set up the appraisal problem and

what should and should not be considered as social costs and
benefits. Once options have been developed, and their outcomes
derived from transport model, appraisal guidance describes how to
assess the value of these outputs and compare them with the costs.

Appraisal is required for all Major Schemes (local transport schemes

greater than 5m) and other schemes that require Government approval,
for example road user charging. For other local transport schemes, the
appraisal guidance should be considered to be best practice.2

The Routemaster bus replacement must be considered to be a major

scheme requiring appraisal because the cost of replacing the
Routemaster vehicles is many times greater than 5 million.
The Government requires this appraisal wherever it is practicable,
so as to promote the public interest. If doing things by the book
Transport for London should have developed a transport model to
predict the response of passengers (and other road users) to the
replacement of the Routemaster and weighed up the costs and benefits
of these changes within the Governments appraisal framework.
When we spoke to Transport for London, they justified the decision
to replace the Routemaster on the grounds of accessibility and meeting
the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act, confirming what
they have said in other public comments. This neatly sidesteps all of
the other issues in the debate surrounding the Routemaster: security;
fare evasion; heritage; and dwell times to name but a few.

2 Transport analysis guidance, department for transport, Major Local Transport Schemes
including Public Transport Projects (http://www.webtag.org.uk/overview/mltschemes.htm)
 Appraising the Routemaster 45

Table 1: Appraisal elements

appraisal of Routemaster replacement

Usually included in appraisal?

Should be included in an

Usually published?

Published by TfL?
Transport modelling

Review of options Yes Yes Sometimes No

Journey times, frequencies, dwell times and reliability Yes Yes Yes No

Quantified customer preference between vehicles Yes No No No

Impacts on other road users Yes Yes Yes No

Appraisal

Appraisal summary table Yes Yes Yes No

Costs Yes Yes Yes No

Time savings Yes Yes Yes No

Quantified benefits of improved safety Yes Yes Yes No

Quantified impact of security on passenger demand Yes No No No

Heritage and tourism impacts Yes No No No

46 Replacing the Routemaster

We find it highly unusual that no information has been made

available by Transport for London about the appraisal of the
Routemaster. Capital schemes the size of the Routemaster replace-
ment programme would normally be subject to a full and public
appraisal process. For example, the Highways Agency publishes
appraisal summary tables for all road schemes with a capital cost of
over 5 million.
Given the policy U-turn and the controversy surrounding the
Routemaster replacement, a full and open transport appraisal is
imperative. This would allow the public to know exactly what they
are getting for their money and why it represents the best value.

Does Current Practice do Justice

to the Routemaster?
Even if a by the book appraisal was published by Transport for
London, it is likely that this would not do justice to the Routemaster.
Many of its unique characteristics do not fit comfortably within
current appraisal guidance. Nevertheless, appraisal could clearly
answer whether the Routemaster should be replaced.

Costs
The treatment of costs in current appraisal practice is well developed. An
appraisal performed by the book would include the costs of: buying new
buses (and their expected lifespan); refurbishing existing buses; changes
to depots, ticket machines and other pieces of capital equipment; fuel,
maintenance and repair; and wages of drivers and conductors.
Together, it should be possible to determine how the costs of
different options compare in the long term.Indeed, even Transport
 Appraising the Routemaster 47

for London have stated that the long term cost implications of
replacing Routemasters are small, with new capital costs of reequip-
ping the fleets and assorted vital accessories roughly balancing the
savings derived from the shedding of conductors.

Boarding and dwell times

Supporters argue that Routemasters have no doors, so passengers
can hop on and off quicker allowing Routemasters to get through
the congested streets of London more quickly. They also argue that
conductors remove the need for passengers to pay on entering,
speeding up boarding. Critics of the Routemaster argue that
Bendybuses have three sets of doors and can therefore load larger
numbers of passengers more quickly. However, this requires passen-
gers to buy tickets in advance, inconveniencing these passengers.
Boarding and dwell times should be part of a properly specified
transport model. Routemasters are faster for loading and unloading
small numbers of people, whereas Bendybuses can board and set
down large numbers of people more quickly at popular stops or
major termini. Appraisal can solve which of these characteristics is
more valuable.
Whilst the time difference at each stop could be minimal
Transport for Londons bus network carries six million passengers
per day leading to substantial savings.

Safety
Routemasters are alleged to be less safe than other types of buses
the accident rate is approximately twice as high. This is because
people tend to fall off the back of them when making dangerous
decisions to jump aboard or jump off.
48 Replacing the Routemaster

Transport appraisal accommodates a quantified and monetised

evaluation of safety consequences. This means that the differences
in the number of accidents on Routemasters and other buses could
be assessed, valued and incorporated in appraisals.
The argument that the Routemaster is safe, but that people make
their own rash decision to jump on or off in dangerous situations
holds no water with the Department for Transport. Road accidents
often occur because of risk taking, but these are treated the same as
any other accident in appraisal.

Heritage, tourism and symbolism

Supporters of the Routemaster say that it is a well-known icon and
symbol of London and should be retained because they are a visual
pleasure and attract tourists. Critics argue that Nobody drives to
work in a Morris Minor because its a design classic.3
The heritage value of the Routemaster could be of value and is not
taken into account in transport appraisals. People could simply take
pleasure in seeing the Routemaster on the streets of London, much
as they value good architecture in a city. Whereas in architecture,
planners have a say in the visual impact of buildings, good design
and visual pleasure is not captured in transport appraisal. As a
symbolic image the Routemaster may also attract tourism, invest-
ment or a flow of workers to London.
Although methods exist to tackle these issues, they are complex
and likely to return a broad range of values. They are consequently
well outside the scope of ordinary appraisal. In economic terms,
good design is a positive externality which people benefit from

3 Peter Hendy, Director of Surface Transport, Transport for London

 Appraising the Routemaster 49

even if they do not pay for it. Although the sizes of any benefit is
very difficult to assess, it does make up a considerable part of the
Routemaster debate and quantification should be attempted.

Conductors and security

Conductors deter violence, vandalism and anti social behaviour and
provide confidence about personal security. This factor would not
normally be part of a quantified cost benefit appraisal. Instead it
would be taken into account qualitatively.
However, it would be quite straightforward to compare the crime
rates on buses with conductors and buses without and to estimate
the cost associated with additional crime on driver only buses. In
London in 2002/3 there were 9,500 criminal incidents on Londons
buses. However, Transport for London has not published the
different crime rates on different types of buses.

Accessibility and wheelchair access

Critics of the Routemaster argue that they are not accessible to
wheelchair users, contravening the Disability Discrimination Act.
This is the prime motivating factor behind the replacement of the
existing Routemaster buses.
However, having a conductor available to help passengers increases
accessibility for these passengers who may otherwise not use buses.
Examples may include the frail and the blind. Some supporters of the
Routemaster argue that the practical consequence of adopting this
non-discriminatory legislation is to reduce the number of disabled
bus users by removing conductors and discouraging many other
disabled users. Supporters of new buses say that other users (such as
people with push chairs) also benefit from low-floors.
50 Replacing the Routemaster

Wheelchair access is a matter of law and transport appraisal

does not assess the value for money that it provides. However, there
are ways of assessing the importance of different kinds of accessi-
bility. One way would be to segment potential bus users into those
that benefit from conductors (such as the frail and the blind) and
those that benefit from low floors (such as wheelchair users and
those with pushchairs), ask both groups which they prefer and assess
the strength of that preference and to how many passengers that
applies. Moreover, in what areas of the city? Are Routemasters more
suitable for central London, with its tourists and business travellers,
than they are in more residential outlying areas?
All this should have been addressed when Transport for London
considered different options for their future bus fleet. An alternative
would be to investigate the cost of developing a successor to the
Routemaster which shares its positive qualities and is accessible to
wheelchair users.

The attractiveness of the Routemaster and other buses

Some argue that passengers simply prefer the experience of travel-
ling on a Routemaster. This is not due to different levels of safety,
security or comfort, but just personal preference. If this is strong
enough to encourage or deter people from using buses then it should
be incorporated in an appraisal.
Preferences and their strength can be determined by asking
passengers. Many of the reasons passengers cite for preferring the
Routemaster have already been discussed under the headings of
security and accessibility. However, these may not pick up all of the
factors that make people prefer one bus over another.
In transport modelling, when comparing different modes, modellers
 Appraising the Routemaster 51

use what is known as a mode specific constant to reflect the fact that
one type of transport is preferred over another. However, this is usually
only used when comparing different modes such as trams and buses.
However, there is no reason why a similar technique should not be used
to model peoples preferences between different types of bus.
Although Transport for London has done some work to gauge
customer reactions to the new buses, it has not published whether
the people it surveyed preferred the new buses or the old
Routemasters.

Hopping on and off

Being able to hop off a bus away from a bus stop allows people to
shorten their journeys. With a small amount of effort, this could be
incorporated (or at least approximated) in a standard transport
model. The value of this time saving would be relatively easy to
calculate and would contribute to the case for keeping the
Routemaster.
This factor would almost certainly not be included in an
appraisal, although it could be significant. The potential negative
safety implications, and ways of valuing them, have already been
described.

Wider impacts on congestion

Supporters of the Routemaster argue that Bendybuses are not suited
to Londons narrow streets, frequent junctions and heavy traffic.
They argue that Bendybuses frequently get stuck in traffic across
junctions and block important traffic routes. They also argue that
passengers are able to quickly hop on and off the Routemaster so
that when it does stops it causes a shorter disruption for other
52 Replacing the Routemaster

traffic. Nonsense, say the Routemasters critics: Bendybuses are

much faster at loading and unloading large volumes of passengers
exactly what is needed to keep the capital functioning.
Although buses carry many people who may otherwise travel by
car, they do take up road space and do contribute to congestion.
Ignoring for a moment the effect of reduced car traffic, buses will
affect road congestion depending on how large they are and how
long they take at stops, amongst other things.
Another important feature is carrying capacity. Bendybuses can
carry almost twice as many passengers as the Routemaster, so when
full the correct comparison would be between the congestion caused
by one Bendybus or two Routemasters. However, for much of the
time, buses are not full.
This is a complex issue that is best addressed through detailed
modelling at a street-by-street level. This can be achieved through
microsimulation a technique that models the passage of road
users through streets and junctions and past obstacles. It can model
the knock-on impacts of a junction being blocked by a large vehicle
or the impacts of a bus taking less or more time to stop and start
again.
The impact on average traffic speeds could be derived from a
microsimulation exercise and the costs and benefits of different
buses to other road users can be assessed.
Again, this is a case of getting the transport modelling right. If
these effects were assessed as part of a Routemaster replacement
appraisal, we have certainly not been told.
 Appraising the Routemaster 53

Conclusions

The most astonishing aspect of Routemaster replacement is the lack

of transparency with which the decision has been made. Bear in
mind that re-equipping TfLs surface transport fleet is no small
matter. TfL and its predecessor organisations have always been the
largest transport authorities in the country the 300 buses
purchased in the run up to the implementation of congestion
charging cost around 50 million and only increased the fleet size by
less than five per cent. The procurement choices that they make, for
good or ill, are not merely of enormous significance in their own
right by virtue of the bulk orders that they entail; TfLs choices also
exert an enormous gravitational pull on other transport authorities.
The economies of scale that derive from a TfL decision to buy new
fleets make it easier for regional companies to afford the same
equipment. That is why its decisions need to be clearly understood
by the paying public whose tax and fare money is at stake here
and done according to the highest standards. On the basis of the
information released so far, TfLs approach seems to fall well short of
best practice.
The Ecology of the Routemaster
Zac Goldsmith

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Routemaster the

point which most rescues it from charges of anachronism is that in
many respects this 50-year-old vehicle is more environmentally-
friendly than the vehicles which are replacing it.
According to Transport for London (TfL), the Routemaster does 8
miles to the gallon, as opposed to the 5.5mpg of a modern double-
decker.1 Londons buses travel 273 million miles every year,2 the
majority of this mileage operated by modern (single-man,
conductor-less) double-deckers. If all modern double-deckers were
replaced with Routemasters, TfL would save at least 10 million
gallons of fuel every year.3

1 Figures from TfL press office.

2 TfL Annual Report, 2003/4.
3 A conservative estimate to reflect the numbers of non double-deck vehicles (eg minibuses) in
the bus fleet. These are more fuel-efficient than modern double-deckers (though, of course,
carry fewer passengers.)
 The Ecology of the Routemaster 55

The reason for the Routemasters greater fuel economy is essen-

tially the same as the reason that it is popular with passengers: it is
better designed. Its revolutionary aluminium body is lighter by more
than 3 tonnes than a lumbering modern bus, which weighs in at 11.5
tonnes. Yet it carries 72 seated passengers, two more than a modern
double-decker. The Routemaster has none of the modern buss other
complicated systems and functions which consume engine power.
For instance, ill-ventilated modern buses have had to be equipped
with air-cooling systems; the Routemaster is equipped with a rather
simpler and greener alternative windows which open.
The Routemasters original AEC engine did not meet modern
emission standards. But since the early 1990s, the engine of every
Routemaster in London passenger service has been replaced.
Cummins Diesel UK developed a repower programme to meet the
Low Emission Zone proposals then under discussion with the City
of Westminster. Uniquely, this Euro 2 conversion obtained Reduced
Pollution Certificate approval and such conversions were entitled to
a substantial grant form the Energy Savings Trust. The Department
of Transport had introduced tax incentives on Vehicle Excise Duty
from 1999 onwards to aid the reduction of harmful particulate
emissions from diesel powered vehicles. As part of these incentives,
the RPC was introduced with for vehicles that had an approved
device fitted to the exhaust system. This is not something that can be
said for approximately 10 per cent of the modern fleet.4
The engineering flexibility of the RM, with its slot-in engine,
makes it easily capable of yet further greening and reinvention. One
RM was fitted with the very latest Euro III-standard engine in 2002

4 TfL Environment Report 2004.

56 Replacing the Routemaster

and another with an ultra low-emission liquified petroleum gas

engine. Unfortunately, by this time TfL had decided to scrap the fleet
and no further conversions were undertaken.
The replacement of the Routemaster by less fuel-efficient buses is
being undertaken despite the fact that TfL describes reducing the
energy consumption of transport as one of its Tier One objec-
tives.5 In its Environment Report 2004, TfL says:

A key aspiration underpinning TfLs vision of being a world leader is

to take account of environmental impacts and opportunities in
managing the transport network. The Government has set a goal of
reducing CO2 emissions by 20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2010 and the
Mayor is committed to ensuring that London plays its part in meeting
this target. Therefore, reducing the energy consumption of transport
is an important part of the Mayors Energy Strategy.6

Another Tier One objective, according to the same report, is to:

reduce noise and vibration by promoting the use of quieter travel

modes and vehicles, reduce the noise generated by vehicle use and
control the levels of transport noise impacts on sensitive
location.TfL is taking steps to reduce the negative impacts of its
services on Londons ambient noise and vibration levels.7

Once again, however, TfLs declared key aspirations bear little

relation to what it is actually doing on the ground. Not only is the

5 TfL Environment Report 2004.

6 TfL Environment Report 2004.
7 TfL Environment Report 2004.
 The Ecology of the Routemaster 57

Routemaster more fuel-efficient than any modern bus, it is also

quieter. Tests carried out for the Evening Standard in 2005 by the UK
Noise Association and Transport 2000 measured the RM at 89.6
decibels, quieter than a modern double-decker (90.6 dB). TfLs
favoured bendy bus was even noisier, clocking in at 92.1 dB.8
John Stewart, of the UK Noise Association, says:

Ironically, with the Mayors push to get more buses on Londons roads
- which is a laudable move - it is now making a significant difference
to noise levels we all experience. It is very disappointing that new
vehicles are actually noisier than those produced 50 years ago. While
car manufacturers have been under pressure to produce quieter
vehicles with lower emissions it seems buses have been left behind
because of their cuddly image.9

Yet another piece of TfL enviro-rhetoric is a commitment to

encourage cycling. The Mayors vision is to achieve an 80 per cent
increase in cycling, says the Environment Report.10 Some progress has
been made towards this goal, with the introduction of more bike racks
and some more cycle lanes, but the introduction of bendy buses has
been a step backwards. The London Cycling Campaign (LCC) calls the
buses cycle lane eaters, citing several instances where

cycle lanes have disappeared or been segmented into useless

splintersbecause the horrible new articulated bendy-buses need
longer bus stops. 11

8 Evening Standard, Routemaster quieter than modern buses, 23 February 2005.

9 ibid
10 TfL Environment Report 2004.
11 Cycle lane eaters, item on LCC website, 25 November 2004.
58 Replacing the Routemaster

Among the places to have suffered loss or part-loss of their cycle

lanes is High Holborn in the City, where bendy buses replaced
conventional modern double-deckers on route 25, and parts of the
route along the formerly Routemaster 73. Not only have the bendies
reduced cycle lanes, the LCC says they are actively dangerous to
cyclists because of their trailing end and because the bus driver can
see less easily when turning.
In a crowded city, the amount of road space taken up by a bendy bus
has a significant environmental impact. The buses are 59 feet long,
nearly twice as long as the longest Routemaster variant, and something
like 400 are now in service. They do, of course, carry more passengers
albeit standing and in very uncomfortable conditions but they spoil
the flow of traffic for other road users, including other bus passengers.
On busy streets, such as New Oxford Street, where there will soon
be three high-frequency bendy routes providing a total of up to 50
buses an hour in each direction, there will be a significant impact on
traffic. Bendy buses have been described by some pressure groups,
including the Save The 73 Campaign, as mobile roadblocks,12 and
there has already been significant localised difficulty in some narrow
streets in Islington and Stoke Newington served by the new bendy
73.13
Terminal and stopping points are another persistent difficulty. On
the bendy route 453, for example, there is no room for the buses to
turn at Deptford Broadway, the theoretical terminus. So more than
130 buses every day run on, empty of passengers, for another mile,
simply in order to turn round. The impact on the environment of

12 Evening Standard, Barmy bendies, 6 August 2004.

13 Highbury & Islington Express, 12 Sep 2004.
 The Ecology of the Routemaster 59

this unnecessary dead running, amounting to nearly 100,000 miles

a year on this one route alone, is obvious.
TfL has achieved significant success in environmental matters,
increasing bus travel by 40 per cent in five years. But this has
nothing to do with its policy of phasing out the Routemaster. The
ecological costs supply yet more reasons why the replacement of the
Routemaster is an idea without merit.
The Security of the Routemaster
Colin Cramphorn

Growing-up in the late 1950s and 1960s, my childhood was full of

authority figures for whom one had respect . They did far more to
shape and form the behaviour of us kids than the apocryphal bobby
on the beat, largely because even in those days we rarely saw one,
contrary to the popular myth so widely subscribed to today. They
ranged from the caretaker, who not only worked but also invariably
lived on the site of the school and was therefore present at all times,
through to the parkie to be found in every municipal park, to the
ever-present clippie on the buses. At the first signs of any delin-
quency they were able to and did intervene. They thereby
prevented whatever misdemeanour was in the making and acting as
an effective instrument of social control promoting confidence and
cohesion. And this was not just with children and young people; it
included many adults whose behaviour the public found threatening
and distressing, such as vagrants, drunks and beggars. As we know to
our cost, these once ubiquitous figures are largely gone from the
 The Security of the Routemaster 61

landscape of our lives, driven out by the weight of the monetarist

economic theory that underpinned Thatcherism. They were sacri-
ficed on the alter of efficiency, which as Professor Janice Gross-Stein
articulated so convincingly in her 2001 Massey Lectures for the CBC
(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), had, by that time, become a
cult with many unintended deleterious consequences.1 One
exception to this general rule had been the survival of the conductor
on the capitals ever-dwindling number of Routemaster buses that
are themselves a product of the 1950s and 1960s.
There are, however, some signs that there is now a growing recog-
nition that narrow cost benefit analysis was flawed in so far as it did
not recognise the benefits such authority figures brought as agents for
crime control and social cohesion. It is increasingly being recognised
that this makes them worthy of being re-invented, where they have
been lost, and preserved where they have managed to cling on. So, for
example, CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built
Environment) have just launched their parkforce campaign with a
report calling for all parks to have a team of dedicated staff to reduce
levels of graffiti, vandalism and crime. And what is more, this
campaign for a return to the days of the parkie, has the support of the
politicians, in the form of the Local Government Association. This is
because local councils recognise that the considerable capital invest-
ments they have made in recent times, reviving neighbourhood parks
will ultimately be wasted if people do not feel confident enough to use
them.2 It is an example of the wider economic criteria now being

1 Janice Gross-Stein The Cult of Efficiency, CBC/SRC Anansi Press Ltd, Toronto, 2002
2 For more on the parkforce campaign visit www.cabespace.org.uk and for LGA endorsement
see Local Government First, issue 263, 10 September 2005, p.2
62 Replacing the Routemaster

factored into political judgements; far from being an operating cost

that must be managed down, if not completely out, the parkie is
once again seen as an asset in building community confidence and
promoting user footfall.
Underpinning this trend is a body of criminological evidence that
has been built up over the last thirty or so years, on both sides of the
Atlantic. Collectively referred to as situational crime prevention,
this wide concept incorporates a diverse set of strands. It includes
Oscar Newmans use of architectural form to provide defensible
space, developed by C. Ray Jeffery into CPTED (crime prevention
through environmental design);3 Herman Goldsteins POP
(problem-oriented policing),4 in which problem solvers are invari-
ably not the police; and the so called rational choice and routine
activity theories that emerged from Home Office studies conducted
during the 1970s.5 This diverse material has been brought together
by Ronald Clarke into the so called twelve techniques of situational
crime prevention, sub-divided into four techniques for each of three
purposes increasing the effort, increasing the risks and reducing
the rewards of offending.6 The four techniques to increase the risks
of committing crime are entry/exit screening (border searches,
baggage screening, automatic ticket gates, merchandise tags, etc),
formal surveillance (police and security patrols, informant hotlines,
burglar alarms, curfew stickers, etc), surveillance by employees

3 Ray Jeffery, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA, 1971
second edition 1977
4 Herman Goldstein, Problem Oriented Policing, McGraw Hill, New York, 1990
5 See R. V. Clarke. & D. B. Cornish, Crime Control in Britain: A Review of Policy Research,
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 1983
6 Ronald V. Clarke (Ed), Situational Crime Prevention, Harrow & Heston, New York, 1992,
pp.10-21
 The Security of the Routemaster 63

(CCTV, concierges, park attendants, etc) and natural surveillance

(neighbourhood watch, street lighting, defensible space, etc).
Surveillance by employees is in addition to their primary
function, at least as traditionally perceived from both an economic
and a functional perspective. But for those dealing with the public
we know this surveillance role is highly influential on crime and
criminality. Indeed there are many research studies that have been
conducted in Canada, the USA and the UK, which provide the
empirical evidence of this with regard to shop assistants, hotel
doormen, park keepers, car park attendants, guards on trains and
bus conductors. It is indeed ironic that with regard to the latter this
includes a Home Office study published over twenty-five years ago,
the insights of which seems to have been lost on those currently
setting transport policy, within the United Kingdom or has it?7
Whilst the detail of the research may well have been long forgotten
there is evidence that the conclusions are re-asserting themselves in
another context namely, the so called mixed economy for visible
policing, for which we in West Yorkshire Police first coined the
phrase plural policing. This contemporary phenomenon, which
continues to be heavily promoted by the current Government, has
been most thoroughly analysed by a team from the Centre for
Criminal Justice Studies at Leeds University led by Professor Adam
Crawford.8 Plural policing reflects the increasing presence of a
multitude of new players, ranging from the uniformed Traffic
Officers of the Highways Agency (HATO) to the Neighbourhood

7 P. Mayhew, R. V. Clarke. J. N. Burrows, J. M. Hough & S. W. C. Winchester Crime in Public

View, Home Office Research Study No:49, HMSO, London, 1979
8 A Crawford, S. Lister, S. Blackburn & J. Burnett, Plural Policing: The mixed economy of visible
patrols in England & Wales, Nuffield Foundation/Policy Press, Bristol, 2005
64 Replacing the Routemaster

and Street Wardens employed by some Local Authorities. But by far

the most visible new presence has been the Police Community
Support Officer (PCSO), who can now be found in most police force
areas across England & Wales.
In West Yorkshire we have more PCSOs per capita than any other
police area, in part because we have developed the role in collabora-
tion with partners in the five metropolitan districts which together
make up West Yorkshire and county-wide bodies such as the
Passenger Transport Executive (PTE). Thus we have a group of
PCSOs who are jointly funded with the PTE, to specifically work
across the bus network patrolling bus stations and travelling
between them on the various operating companies buses, buses that
are almost exclusively single manned. This is but a new take on the
old concept of surveillance by employees, which has worked well for
us, but it does not provide a universal presence on all buses. It has
provided a reasonable and proportionate level of reassurance to the
travelling public, at least prior to the events of 7 July 2005 in
London, which is why our partners in the PTE have been willing to
invest in it in the way they have.
The bomb attacks across the transport network in London, on 7
and 21 July 2005, included two attacks on buses. The links between
the 7 July attackers and West Yorkshire are well known, and whilst it
seems that the original plan did not include a bus bombing, when
the primary target was denied to one of the attackers, he re-tasked
himself onto a bus with devastating consequences. Why did he
attack a bus? Most likely because it was a readily available substitute
target, where he perceived there was little risk of challenge or
discovery prior to detonation of his bomb.
We know that PIRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) in its
 The Security of the Routemaster 65

bombing campaigns in London during the 1970s through to the

1990s eschewed the targeting of buses, although there were own
goals where volunteers conveying bombs to their intended targets
blew themselves up by mistake whilst travelling by bus. Why was this?
We have it on impeccable authority, from a leading defector from the
IRA, that it was in part due to the surveillance by employee that
resulted from the presence of a conductor on virtually every bus.9
In Israel the bus network has long been the subject of suicide
bomb attacks by Palestinian groups of the Islamic Resistance
Movement, more commonly referred to in the west as Hamas. In
response the Israeli authorities have deployed bus queue attendants
who constantly monitor and assess those waiting for buses at the
interchanges and depots. Whilst not completely preventing attacks
upon buses, they are credited with reducing the number of
successful attacks. Their very presence discourages targeting of buses
in the first place, and in the case of those determined to press home
an attack, their presence helped raise the alarm before the would be
bomber could board the intended target.
It is, of course, impossible to definitively determine whether, if
there were still conductors on all buses, there would have been no
attacks on buses in July 2005 but it is at the very least arguable that
it may well have been so. Even a terrorist who has determined to
detonate himself with his bomb is concerned to achieve the greatest
possible effect in doing so. If unable to achieve that by boarding a
bus then it will most likely only displace the attack to an easier target.
But given the shock to the confidence of the travelling public that

9 Sean OCallaghan, former head of the PIRA Southern Command and An Garda Siochana agent
provided this explanation at a Policy Exchange event on 18 July 2005. See the Guardian, 19 July 2005
66 Replacing the Routemaster

these events have administered, there must also be a very real

argument based on the re-assurance and confidence value they can
bring, to re-introduce an additional layer of security such as that a
conductor provides.
So where does this leave the case for the clippie? For me whether
one is concerned with what the Irish call decent honest crime (my
favourite oxymoron) or with countering terrorism the case stacks
up. The criminological evidence showed us a long time ago that inci-
vilities, vandalism and other crime are reduced by the presence of an
authority figure, such as a bus conductor. Recognition of this fact
seems to be re-emerging by the deployment of new substitutes in the
form of the PCSOs now working on the buses in West Yorkshire.
With regard to terrorism there is no empirical evidence but there is
anecdotal evidence and practical experience to indicate that there are
benefits to be gained from the deployment of appropriate authority
figures: benefits both in terms of reducing the vulnerability to attack
and promoting confidence in the continued use of the buses. I am
not an economist or a transport professional, and I do recognise
other mechanisms that facilitate surveillance by employees are in use
on the buses, such as CCTV. Nevertheless, I do not believe they
provide the real time benefits provided by the Mark 1 human
eyeball actually deployed in situ with the potential and the capacity
for immediate action.
The Aesthetic of the Routemaster
Kate Bernard

To her fans, the Routemaster is a curvaceous dame in a red dress; a little

past her prime, maybe, but as Michael Caines Alfie would no doubt say
(nonchalantly hopping aboard in his mohair suit), shes in lovely
condition. She calms the virgin traveller and the ruffled city man with
the briefcase who leaps aboard at the lights with her subtly swaying gait
and soft tones. Dont worry, she seems to say to her passengers in a
low voice, moving off smoothly with a cheerful ding ding: youre in
expert hands. Maybe the Routemaster is actually just a bus after all, but
its tempting to imagine that something which arouses such great
passion in us might itself have a soul to fancy its not just an engine
throbbing away under the old girls bonnet, but her heart.
The Routemaster (or RM) was the last open platform bus to be
built in London and, as much as the Houses of Parliament and the
black cab, has become part of Londons very fabric. So much so that
it is actually rather difficult to visualise an area of London - take
Parliament Square or Piccadilly Circus - without a Routemaster or
68 Replacing the Routemaster

two sailing into view. Our capitals favourite bus has become a
national treasure without anyone being able to say quite when such
a metamorphosis took place.
It must have helped that there were once so many of these old red
buses tootling around town. 2875 Routemasters were built between
1954 and 1968 (I am reliably informed by Travis Elborough, author
of The Bus We Loved, without doubt the most amusing and stimu-
lating text on the matter). It first arrived on the streets of London
Golders Green to be precise, heading for Crystal Palace via St Johns
Wood, Marble Arch, Victoria, Vauxhall, etc in 1956. It was a time
of Teddy Boys, circular skirts and national strife. Part of the
immediate charm of the London bus is its colour. The Fifties is a
decade that has since been regarded as a poor, grey and depressing
one. Here was a bus, bright, jolly and rounded on the outside and
hugely welcoming inside: unusually, for the era, it had a heating
system as well as comforting colours and tartan upholstery.
The design of the Routemaster is the foundation on which its
status as a cultural icon - and it really deserves this overused term -
is built. The exceptional quality of the buss body, balance, engine
and general performance have been bolstered by extraordinary
longevity. The cleverness of its construction - superior suspension
and completely interchangeable panels that impress the most
unemotional traveller - gave it a pleasing flexibility. But it is the look
and feel of the thing that says most about the Routemaster, and for
that we must thank Douglas Scott, a product designer who had
previously displayed a smart, practical style for his redesign of the
Aga in the 1930s (anyone who owns a classic pre-1978 model has a
Scott in their kitchen) and his K8 telephone box. Instructed to
supply plans for a vehicle that should be, according to Albert
 The Aesthetic of the Routemaster 69

Durrant (London Transports chief officer and the driving force

behind the Routemaster), an attractive piece of street furniture -
shame on the designers of all later London buses! - Scott stole the
shape out of the basic box shape, making curves as he went, until he
delivered the friendly looking Routemaster. Windows opened just
enough and didnt rattle, while seats and bulbs of the kind that could
be replaced in minutes were installed as standard.
Decoration of the interior was no less carefully considered. The
tubular steel rails and seat backs; the colour of the lining panels was
burgundy rexine, a leathercloth-type material that was only painted
after around five years of use. Then there were the grey-green
window frames, fancifully referred to as Chinese green. But it was the
pale nicotine yellow ceilings, which on the smoky upper deck acted
as camoflage, and Scotts dirt-hiding moquette upholstery that
ensured the Routemaster kept its looks. Passengers too, got off
lightly; no stockings would be snagged, no trousers worn thin by the
hard-wearing upholstery, which had been thoughtfully edged in
smooth leather so that it was possible to gracefully slide along your
seat when getting in and out of it.
Smoking a cigarette on the upper deck of a Routemaster (before it
was banned in 1991) was one of the great pre-nanny state joys. Is it
my imagination or was the upper deck back seat the very last place
we were allowed to smoke on the bus? It is certainly the most attrac-
tive perch on the Routemaster; slightly smaller than usual it doubles
as the perfect love seat, apparently designed for courting couples,
and a commanding spot where the lone traveller is inviolate. Hop on
the 14 in the Fulham Road in time for lunch in Soho with your
lover/newspaper and a cigarette and you might have been lucky
enough to find the rumble seat free.
70 Replacing the Routemaster

But smoking on the Routemaster ran a poor second to simply

being on board. With the right conductor, your bus ride became a
theatrical experience, an interaction between as many human
beings from different walks of life as wanted to take part. Few of the
original conductors remain today. These men - as they usually were,
though there were and still are some brilliantly jolly conductresses
as well - were often extreme characters. Like London cabbies they
fell into one of two categories: chummy and garrulous or wildly
unhelpful and monosyllabic. The talkative ones usually acted as
informal guides, helping to give the tourist a flavour of (as well as
directions around) the city. The job, performing among strangers,
the jaunty captain of a ship of fools, seemed to lend itself to revue-
style comedy. It was always amusing, or at the very least comforting
to hear the hammier music hall turns punctuate the route with
some helpful reminder of where we were. Green Park, Green Park!
The Ritz for those as can afford it, a walk in the park for those as
cant! Or: She wants to go to the Worlds End, ladies and
gentlemen! Why should a nice girl like you want to visit the end of
the world?
It was the rib tickling theatrical possibilities of bus-conducting
which must have suggested itself to the makers of that dreadful but
popular television sitcom, On the Buses, the 1971 film version of
which outsold Diamonds Are Forever to become (amazingly enough)
the nations highest ever box office earner. As Travis Elborough
points out, there are fewer Routemasters with starring roles in
British films than we imagine; both On the Buses and the Cliff
Richard vehicle, Summer Holiday (1962) are made with RTs, the
Routemasters predecessor. But it is the Routemaster that forms the
backdrop, the scarlet punctuation mark in almost every film made in
 The Aesthetic of the Routemaster 71

London between 1960 and 2000; thats 40 years of solid character

acting. In films as diverse as Dead of Night - Room for one more
inside, cries the spooky conductor conveying his passengers to their
doom - and Notting Hill, where Hugh Grant, on leaving the Ritz
leaps onto a number 12 (though what a number 12 is doing outside
the Ritz on Piccadilly instead of Oxford Street is anyones guess, the
film already being somewhat far-fetched). Some of us are waiting for
the Routemaster to be the bus with a mind of its own, a Stephen
King double decker that takes no passengers, as it were.
In 1962 pop artist Allen Jones was already working on a series of
bus paintings, the same year the Routemasters were rolling out of
production at the rate of eight a week. In 1964 Corgi made their first
diecast model of a Routemaster, the first concrete sign that the bus
was popularly considered a design classic. By 1966 the Routemaster
had another starring role, alongside Beefeaters, the Royal family and
Kings Road poseurs: it was advertising Swinging London. And
Chanels London Red nail varnish can only have been inspired by the
Routemaster.
If those in pursuit of liberty (or at least the feeling of liberty when
taking themselves down the Kings Road wearing their best togs to
buy even better ones) werent able to roll along on a spanking new
scooter or an open-topped sports car for the rest of the world to
admire, the Routemaster could take them. Travelling thus it was
possible to be as smooth as those who didnt need public transport.
You could run for the bus and leap on athletically, maybe swinging
yourself around the pole as you went. And you could leap off in the
same way; stepping off backwards was a smart move, especially when
the bus was slowing down at a big corner, making young men seem
graceful but thrill-seeking chaps about town.
72 Replacing the Routemaster

By the Eighties, it was perfectly acceptable for smart people,

people who could afford taxis and cars with drivers to take the bus
into town, whether they needed to or not. Francis Bacon might have
made millions from his paintings during his life, but that didnt stop
him being a regular on the number 14, which stopped near his Reece
Mews studio and deposited him in Soho and vice versa (it should be
remembered that the first sighting of a famous person on a bus was
probably George Nathaniel Curzon, who like so many grandees is
supposed to have asked the conductor to take him to his home at 1
Carlton House Terrace). I cant imagine Francis Bacon or anyone
else with style allowing himself to be imprisoned on a hissing
Bendy bus (having of course planned in advance to have the exact
1.20 fare on his person and having bought a ticket from the
machine before boarding), to be thrown around like washing in the
dryer. Its just not cool. Which is an important point, because it
seems that the people who make decisions about transport in
London are trying to suggest today that the Routemaster is uncool,
is somehow small-minded, little Britain.
Back in the land of pop culture, its the Nineties. New York was fun
while it lasted but lets face it, the music has gone downhill since
Blondie and its all about money and unwieldy mobile telephones.
Over here, meanwhile, Oasis and Blur are vying for the top spot in
the charts, Kate Moss is already making her mark. Damien Hirst has
produced a sculpture from a tiger shark in formaldehyde; Alexander
McQueen is arguably the best fashion designer in the world; the
working classes are mixing with the upper classes again as they did
in the Sixties. The Union Jack is fluttering with ironic pride. Its all
about Cool Britannia. Londons burning and the Routemaster is still
there, still looking good and feeling great. The tourists love it, but
 The Aesthetic of the Routemaster 73

they love it because it is an integral part of our city, because we use

it as a matter of course. In 1999, Catherine McDermott even
included the Routemaster in her Design Museum Book of 20th
Century Design.
Fast forward to 2005. Weve all heard the bad news about the
Routemaster and for the first time ever the vast majority of Londoners
are no longer able to take their bus for granted. People are starting to
have conversations on the bus about the bus and what might happen
to it, and to them, when it goes. One things for sure, if the
Routemaster is to be snuffed out, the romance of bus travel is drawing
to a halt. Who in their right minds could find a Bendy bus a thing of
beauty or romance? Whod even toy with romance on the modern
bus? How can you flirt under strip lights in an interior that owes more
to a post-modern childrens playroom than a mode of transport - all
those stupid, ugly shapes, materials and colours? Is Transport for
London seriously asking us to believe that this is cool, is egalitarian, is
anything to like or be proud of? They ask a great deal.
Losing the Routemaster (at the time of writing only three services
remain, all to be binned by Christmas) will be like losing a part of
London, an old lover who still inspires enormous affection. For the
moment you can still see her in the form of the 13 - turning out of
Baker Street, battling her way down Oxford Street. There she waits,
chugging patiently while bigger, fatter, more ugly but undeniably
younger buses get in her way and make unseemly noise and bustle
and fuss. These bendy buses and hissing buses arent even her
progeny. Have you looked at their faces? If they have faces at all, they
have no expression whatsoever.
The Horror of the Bendy
Kate Hoey MP

VERY FEW forms of transport are so unlikeable, so determinedly

anti-human and fail in so many different ways as the bendy bus. I am
setting out on that once fairly simple undertaking a bus journey.
But mine will be a journey by bendy bus, and some things which I
once took for granted are now just that little bit more complicated.
The stop, for instance, may well have been moved, like those at
Waterloo station. These are some of the busiest bus stops in London,
used by thousands of commuters a day. The old stops were right next
to the station exit. But the road space round there isnt enough for
bendy buses; so when the Red Arrow routes which used it went
bendy, all the stops had to be shifted three hundred yards up the
road, further away from the station exit. A new escalator link has
been opened to serve them, at a cost of several million pounds, but
its still far less convenient than the walk of old.
Something similar has happened at the other end of the same Red
Arrow routes, in London Bridge. The bendies have stayed in the
 The Horror of the Bendy 75

station forecourt here; the solution at London Bridge has been to

banish some of the other routes which used to serve the station.
Passengers on the busy route 343, for instance, used to be able to
catch their bus right outside. Now they have to cross the bus station,
go down a long flight of stairs, and to an isolated bus stop in a street
five minutes walk away. Integrated public transport, disintegrating,
just a little, before our eyes. So, anyway, I have made it to the stop.
And, look, theres a bus pulling up! If it had been a Routemaster, or
even a modern double-decker, I used to be able just to hop on. But
now, because of the bendies, all buses in central London need tickets
before boarding. And the ticket machines need the exact change. Bus
conductors, even bus drivers, used to give change. But there is no
arguing with a machine. Its all being done to further the half-truth
that bendies are faster to board. They are, but only because they make
you pay the fare in your time, not theirs. By the time Ive found a
newsagent who will change my fiver, the bus has vanished but right
behind it, here comes another one. Bunching, I know a particular
problem with bendies but it suits me, this time. I fumble with the
ticket machine, but the coins come right back out. Some machines
reject them if theyre too shiny. Others just seem to be permanently
vandalised, whether by actual vandals or frustrated passengers, who
knows?
I call out to the driver, but he doesnt hear, or doesnt care. Off
goes the bus, the second one Ive missed. An extended wait, now
still ticketless, hoping to appeal to the driver, unwilling to walk to the
next stop in case another bus appears. It doesnt, of course. Theyre
all on Oxford Street, too long to pass each other, stacking up like
freight cars in a marshalling yard. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and
a bus arrives, jammed to the doors. But theres no conductor or
76 Replacing the Routemaster

driver to police the entrances or regulate the load. More passengers

push on through the middle and rear doors surely this must be
unsafe? I squeeze in at the front, hoping to argue with the driver. He
hears my story with an indifferent shrug, hands out a small slip of
paper asking me to post my fare to an address in Victoria. Behind
me, according to TfLs own statistics, at least 7 per cent of my fellow
passengers 11 or 12 on each fully-loaded bus will not have
approached the driver. They will neither be paying their fares, nor
intending to pay, adding to the already intolerable crush. There is
nothing to stop them; and, indeed, given the state of the ticket
machines, there is a great deal to encourage them. On some routes in
south London, the proportion of free riders is far, far higher. TfL is
fond of saying that unsupervised boarding is the European way, the
way of the future. But if it actually troubled to look at the continent
of Europe, so rampant has fare-dodging become that it would find
several major transport administrations, including Berlins,
retreating from unsupervised boarding, going back to the London
style of making people get on at the front and pay the driver. In a
rather typical British way, we are adopting what we believe to be a
modern European trend when it is actually becoming a thing of the
past.
Back on board, the passengers look a little miserable. The tradeoff
for taking the bus was that your journey might have been slower, but
it was more civilised. You got a seat, and you could see London
passing by through the window. The bendy bus, with its impossible
sightlines and packed compartments, has destroyed the old bargain.
It has brought to the bus network all the discomfort of the Tube
but none of the speed. We are advancing, sluggishly, through the
heavy traffic. I notice a couple of cyclists braking sharply to avoid
 The Horror of the Bendy 77

being swept off their bikes the buses are too long for the driver to
see a cyclist properly when hes on the outer side of our trailing end.
Someone in front of me gives up her seat to stand, because shes
sitting in a backward facing seat and she feels sick. The standing
passengers shuffle and sway, clinging onto railings, thrown around
with the motion of the bus. The saloon is filled with high-pitched
beeping noises. The air-cooling system is not doing its job.
And then a rare, but welcome, sight: a passenger in a wheelchair,
waiting at the bus stop. This man though there may be only a
thousand or so like him using the network every day is the only
real reason why a bendy bus is better than a Routemaster. It will be
able to transport him as easily as it transports an able-bodied
passenger. Wont it? Sadly, it turns out that our bus is too jammed
with people, fare-paying and otherwise, to fit the wheelchair on
board. There simply isnt space for it. Although accessible in
theory, the bendy buses are often so crowded that in practice acces-
sibility often limited. One more problem to report today. Roadworks
on part of the route mean the bus has to be diverted. But the
diversion being used is not big enough for two bendies to pass so
the buses in our direction must go nearly a mile out of their way,
adding an extra ten minutes to the journey.
As the ride finally ends, I claw my way through the crowd, off the
bus, thankful to have arrived and marvelling at the contempt for the
public, the sheer lack of thought and consideration, displayed by
whoever it was who decided that a bendy was a better idea than a
Routemaster. However you want to slice it economically, environ-
mentally, aesthetically the real, practical advantage in bus
operation belongs to the Routemaster. The only reason the bendies
can possibly be preferred is because they seem more modern, more
78 Replacing the Routemaster

fashionable. But true modernity is not about materials, not about

smoked glass windows and a boxy shape. True modernity is about
more effectively meeting human needs. Fashions change, and will
overtake the bendy bus. The Routemaster, which has so far never
been overtaken, is more genuinely modern than the Mayors white
elephant will ever be. That is why my constituents love it so. What a
pity they have nevver been properly consulted by Ken Livingsrone or
Transport for London
Appendix
Dean Godsons Times article from 21 July 2005
and the response from Peter Hendy,
Director of Surface Transport, Transport for London

I want to hop on a red bus again

Dean Godson
The Routemaster bus is being run off London's streets by political correctness

Ken Livingstones long, slow destruction of the Routemaster

Londons much-loved and practical hop-on, hop-off buses must
rank as one of the greatest acts of municipal vandalism of our time.
Tomorrow two more routes go: the 14 and 22, to be replaced by
those new double-deckers that afford such paltry ventilation on
boiling summer days.
This will leave only three runs. The 13 and 38 disappear in
October. The latter, Tony Blairs old bus, which used to take him
from Islington to Westminster, will be replaced by a bendy bus,
Transport for Londons answer to the 1960s tower block.
80 Replacing the Routemaster

The 159 is the last to be decommissioned (like Turners The

Fighting Temeraire) on December 10. All that will remain, possibly,
are a couple of proposed heritage routes for tourists: the trans-
portational equivalent of the white man letting the once-proud
Sioux Indian thread beads on a reservation.
But unlike The Fighting Temeraire a wooden Nelsonian man
owar being pulled to its last berth by a modern steam tug the
Routemaster is still eminently usable. Moreover, the debate over its
demise dramatically illuminates the clashing visions of the capitals
civic identity. In his forthcoming history of the Routemaster, The
Bus We Loved, Travis Elborough describes the dismissive view of a
senior TfL official. Any bus which is quirky and old is iconic, espe-
cially in a country which is obsessed with its history and its empire
and has no real idea of its place in the modern world and its place in
Europe.
Actually, the vehicle remains the embodiment of urban cool. It is
the last bus built specifically for Londons narrow streets, by
Londoners, in London. Constructed as a piece of street furniture, it
blended perfectly with its surroundings. So emblematic is the
Routemaster that it appears on the front of three leading guide
books.
So what will the tourists visiting London for the 2012 Olympics
find instead of the traditional London bus, as British as Big Ben?
They will find the bendies, built for wider continental boulevards by
Mercedes Benz in Germany. No more freedom to alight when and
where you want: now we are all at the mercy of the driver.
Tourists will also discover that journeys on the new double-deckers
take longer because the drivers must perform the conductors function
and take the money. The Olympic visitor could get on a new quick-to-
 Appendix 81

board bendy, but they offer a stingy 49 seats compared with the
Routemasters 72: a far worse deal for the elderly, too.
These conductor-less vehicles are far more prone to low-level
vandalism and as such offer less reassurance to women. Yes, the new
buses have CCTV, but it often is not working, as was shown by the
double-decker blown up by Tavistock Square. Sean OCallaghan,
who participated in the Provisionals bombing campaign in London
during the Troubles, has noted that one reason why Republicans
tended not to plant bombs on buses was because of nervousness of
being interdicted by a conductor.
There are financial gains to be had by tossing the conductors on
to the scrapheap of history. But these are outweighed by the costs of
having to replace these 200,000 vehicles around every eight years
compared with 50,000 to re-equip a 50-year-old Routemaster
plus the capital costs of constructing new depots to accommodate
the longer bendy buses.
All this is without reckoning upon fare evasion on multidoor
bendies: in some areas they constitute virtually a free service. The
Treasury and the Audit Commission need to look at the exploding
cost of Whitehalls subsidy to TfL, which is now close to 1 billion
per annum of which its anti-Routemaster tilt is but a part.
So how did this come to pass? After all, at the time of the first
mayoral election of 2000 the three main candidates Livingstone,
Steven Norris and Susan Kramer backed the Routemaster. They
must surely have had some nose for the political marketplace. Once
elected, Livingstone began a programme of buying back 49
Routemasters with low-emission Cummins engines. But he reversed
course with almost Heathite alacrity. It says much about how public
policy is made in this country. The destiny of Londons buses was
82 Replacing the Routemaster

determined not by participatory local democracy but in a relatively

quiet accommodation between a politically correct technocratic elite
at TfL and group rights lobbyists. Ever sensitive to those who claim
to speak for the handicapped, Livingstone was persuaded that all
buses had to be made fully accessible to wheelchairs now, even
though the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 insists that this
only be achieved by 2017.
So for a mere 1,200 wheelchair trips on Londons buses a day out
of a total of six million passengers the remaining 140 Routemasters
must go. Thus do the interests of the few prevail over the many. And
many of the groups that might be expected to speak up for the vast
majority of Londoners cave in to this moral tyranny. The London
Transport Users Committee, the consumers watchdog, laments the
demise of the Routemaster but declares that equal access is supreme.
But there is still time just. That is why Policy Exchange, as part
of its urban programme, will look at the viability of maintaining the
Routemaster or constructing one with disabled access just as the
new black cab clearly evolved from its predecessor. As the Manhattan
Institute showed in New York, no great city can ignore the aesthetic
consequences of policy. So bring on those gorgeous red curves again.
Appendix 83
84 Replacing the Routemaster
Appendix 85
 Foreword by Simon Jenkins
Guardian columnist, former Editor of the Evening Standard and board member of London Transport

Introduction by Dean Godson

Research Director of Policy Exchange

The Politics of the Routemaster by Andrew Gilligan

features writer at the Evening Standard and Defence and Diplomatic editor of the Spectator

Building the Son of Routemaster by Andrew Morgan

co-founder of the Routemaster Operators and Owners Association

Appraising the Routemaster by Dominic Walley

Managing Economist at the Center for Economics

The Ecology of the Routemaster by Zac Goldsmith

editor of the Ecologist

The Security of the Routemaster by Colin Cramphorn

Chief Constable of West Yorkshire

The Aesthetic of the Routemaster by Kate Bernard

Features Editor of Tatler

The Horror of the Bendy by Kate Hoey

Labour MP for Vauxhall

Cover photo: Photonews Service Ltd. Old Bailey

10
ISBN 0-9547527-7-5

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