Articles
The coolest bus in the universe travels through London Daniel Sage
Come to London and take a ride on the bus from design paradise. The bus with the fuss. The bus that’s a cross between the beauty of a horse and the car out of Starsky and Hutch. And it can take you all the way to the top. Possibly the most cherished star turn in London after Churchill, the Empire and winning world wars is our iconic double-decker bus. Trundling along through the generations, open at the back to all the elements, and presided over by a conductor with a winding tickertape dispenser, a ride on top is still ‘the best way to see London’, as four-time prime minister William Gladstone declared in 1890. The very first doubledecker was operated by the Economic Conveyance Company of London in 1847. It boasted a clerestory roof, a design normally found in churches, that allowed seating on the top and which in the earliest versions was open-air and half the price of sitting downstairs inside. Buses then were still
Boris and the Boris Bus. Source: Ogilvy Barnet
pulled by horses. The doubledecker needed three. In 1956, the Routemaster was introduced, a model that has captured imaginations at home and internationally like no other. Its very name reeks of majesty and power. The Route Master. It’s been in more films than MGM’s lion, more postcards than the Eiffel Tower, and the scene of more passionate kisses, proposals, bust-ups, stand-offs, fights, reunions and singalongs than Times Square and Circular Quay put together. For 50 years, the Routemaster ruled the road roost
until 2002, when, in a new age of civic mindfulness, it could no longer do its job properly. To adapt the buses to accommodate less nimble or disabled passengers, as required by new, more enlightened disability legislation, just proved too difficult and so they were decommissioned, to an uproar of public dismay. An uproar perfect for a politician willing to step in and save the day. ‘We will build a new Routemaster,’ proclaimed the mayor of London. It will be the same, but better. It will be redder, and even more lovable and
iconic. The wheels on this new bus will go rounder and rounder. And a competition was decreed throughout the land. And in due time, entries were sifted and a winner was declared. And it was declared as much as anything because it was the coolest bus ever designed on the planet, with all the features of the earlier model upgraded to the latest spec, and with an outrageous transparent curve that spiralled from the floor all the way around the back of the bus up to the top where it evened out into one continuous window. It was so cool, it simply had to be built. The bus is also called the Boris Bus, after London’s Tory mayor Boris Johnson, the driving brains behind it.
He brought us Boris Bikes too, the hire-bike scheme now all over London, much to the annoyance of Barclays Bank who funded the scheme and hoped people would call them Barclays Bikes. (Can you take a Boris Bike on a Boris Bus? No.) Boris himself has more plans afoot. This May sees a general election in the UK. With masterful ambivalence Boris has repeatedly ruled himself out of running for prime minister, though noone believes him and many would be happy to see him in power. The Tories hope to stay, of course, but prime minister David Cameron caused a stir last week by frankly admitting he has no intention of running for a third term
should they get in for seconds now. In public, he and Boris have a love-hate relationship full of sharp banter and posturing. It’s quite possible they’ve hatched plans for Boris to take over at some point if public opinion is behind them. Is Boris cool? Er, no. But that’s not stopped him so far. He may look daft, he may like to play the fool and curry easy favour, but he’s a shrewd, hungry and dangerous bus designer under that bonnet. Forget Great Britain. We may one day become Boris Britain. Q A former Byron resident, Daniel Sage is a columnist and author of the novel Fall Curve. See more at www. danielsage.co.uk.
On the other hand, there’s Copenhagen’s Zoo Busssss. Source: E Karsholt
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The Byron Shire Echo April 15, 2015 11