Bring back the freedom of the city of London

Thursday February 21, 2008

Adrian Brown calls for the restoration of the much-loved Routemaster bus

Even the name is an honest statement of functional design that just works. Product of a historic two-year consultation with the Londoners who would be running and riding it; built to last, no scrimping and designed to be an elegant piece of Gilbert-Scott inspired street-furniture which also just happens to be the best means ever devised for keeping London moving.

So iconic had the dear old thing become, and such an essential ingredient to the London mix that, in 2000, mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone enthused that “Only a dehumanised moron would get rid of the Routemaster”. Needless to say Mayor Livingstone axed the bus in 2005, one year short of its 50th anniversary, offering justification via Disability Access regulations due to be imposed from … 2017.

Transport for London’s figures indicate 0.017% of all London bus journeys are made by wheelchair-users. Better to battle the crush of standing passengers in EU-approved buzzer-beeping card-logged bendybus purgatory rather than phone for a door-to-door taxi subsidised by TfL through their Taxicard scheme?

In addition, people on higher-rate Disability Living Allowance continue to be offered the national Motability programme providing a new car every three years, free of charge, whether that person drives or not. Excellent schemes and tailored precisely to the needs of their users, hence rather less expensive and disruptive than a universal “accessibility” infrastructure, particularly when, as in this case, the old infrastructure worked so well for the other 99.983%.

Community-minded

Those accessibility gaps left by the RM’s designers tended to be filled by helpful and community-minded people. In England, we don’t just watch someone struggle, we get up and help. And, in seeking to universalise one minority’s specific access-need, the needs of others are superceded. The loss of a conductor’s helping hand and reassuring presence can hardly be claimed as an empowerment for those with mobility-difficulties but who don’t use a wheelchair: blind people, MS sufferers, the old and frail.

Occupying two car-lengths in its original form yet offering capacity for 70 passengers, much of the Routemaster’s practical success can be attributed to its fast-loading open-platform, with conductors to supervise boarding and collect fares on the move. An empowering principle was that open rear, speaking of an older public-service ideal: provision without undue proscription.

Naturally, with the freedom to jump on and off anywhere we jolly well could, came a challenge to the brave. A source of (whisper very quietly) fun for those of us who didn’t mind balancing cheap thrills against the potential for public humiliation and a plate of pavement pie. Our decisions, our consequences, our individual lessons learned… naughty. Nanny Knows Best.

The open-platform two-man operated bus, of which the Routemaster was the longest-lived and best-loved example, was an embodiment of choice and freedom. From its individual wind-down windows to its lover’s refuge upstairs at the back; from its Sung Yellow tungsten-lit smoking-saloon to its snug gossip-den downstairs, each Routey was its own little community of communities; a tolerant human system with a place for [almost] everyone. No wonder it became political.