A title from Standard to make cockney patriotic hearts sing: “‘Boris buses off roads across London as Sadiq Khan ‘cleans up previous mayor’s messy legacy'”. The original Routemasters, introduced in the mid-1950s to fill the hole in the transport network left by the fall of the tram, were a fixture on the capital’s streets for half a century. The new bus for London – overweight, overpriced, overheated – is leaving after just 14 years. If anyone’s in the market for a 12-ton metaphor for Boris Johnson’s contribution to British national life, you’re in luck.
In fact, the bus is not as close to the end of the line as a careless reading of that headline would suggest. It is true that buses will be withdrawn from three lines this year, and two more by the end of 2028. But the reason is not, in fact, the irrational desire of Sadiq Khan to erase the legacy of his predecessor, perhaps laughing like a maniac: Transport for London (TfL) wants to pass the capital to zero. that.
Even then, it won’t be like this for long. TfL generally requires bus companies to supply their own buses, but took the unusual step of buying 1,000 of these fat boys themselves. Each has a projected lifespan of 14 years, and the newest ones were built in 2017, so they could be plying other roads for another five years. When they’ve only been going since 2012, that’s no small break.
What is clear, however, is that Sadiq Khan will not be crying crocodile tears: the mayor sounded the death knell of buses when he told TfL to stop buying them in 2016. And if their demise “means getting rid of the legacy of the mayor’s mess”, he said “a drama earlier this month”.
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How the man in the Clapham omnibus feels about all this is hard to know: I haven’t been able to find the poll. But I, for one, will not mourn. The new bus for London has been a disaster.
The first problem is the price. Each bus cost £350,000 – really, what is it with Boris Johnson and questionable sums of money starting with those figures? – compared to £190,000 for standard duplex. This figure was supposed to decrease as many rolled off the production line; TfL could even have made money through underselling in other markets. Sadly, TfL only bought 1,000, the exact number required for it to claim its share of the IP, and the other markets wanted none.
This is because, despite extensive design work by Thomas Heatherwick and Wrightbus, the buses never worked very well. Their hybrid diesel engines were hampered by repeated battery failures, meaning they were often converted to pure diesel buses, which, being heavier, were actually more polluting than the vehicles already on the road. They were also quite comically uncomfortable and brought complaints about a lack of legroom, poorly placed handrails and a tendency to turn into ovens the moment the sun came out. (The windows didn’t open until they were repaired at a cost of £3 million; at least it gave them the mildly amusing nickname of “roasted roasters”.)
Worst of all, the new buses couldn’t even offer the supposed benefits of the better-looking Routemasters they were meant to revive. The three doors and two steps were meant to allow for quicker boarding and let passengers jump in and out of the back while imagining they were in the swinging sixties. That picturesque decade, however, had a tougher attitude to passenger safety, and to operate in the 21st century, the new buses required conductors as well as drivers, adding £62,000 each year to their running costs. The fact that multiple doors enabled toll avoidance didn’t help either. In 2016, TfL announced that new buses would henceforth only open one door and lay off conductors. This did good things for its balance sheet, but terrible things for the prospects of the expensive new bus.
How did what could still, in 2012, call itself a serious world city stumble upon this spectacular white elephant? It would be easy, and fair too, to just say “Boris Johnson” and leave it at that. But the reason why Johnson was inclined to create this sort of mess arose, I think, from his peculiar view of politics: as an ambitious Roman senator, he always seemed to see the world merely as a stage set for his grand ambition; those of us who populated it were just the crowd.
In the same way, the New Bus for London was conceived less as a functional mode of transport than as a piece of scenery – a bus designed for the benefit of people who wouldn’t even dream of traveling on one. No wonder Johnson found a kindred spirit in Thomas Heatherwick. They deserve each other. Not even London deserved it.
(Further reading: Inside Labour’s escalating immigration row)
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