1. London's Bus History
The TfL buses sub-site features an history tour of London’s buses. It’s very brief. Whereas volumes and volumes exist on London’s bus history, TfL condenses the lot into just 644 words. Here’s a summary of their summary, featuring the more bizarre:
The first London horse bus started in July 1829 and the last was in August 1914.
Horse feed fluctuated in price in a similar way to today’s oil.
On horse some buses, passengers stopped the bus by banging on the roof or pulling on reins attached to the driver's arms.
During the Great War, some London buses were converted into mobile pigeon lofts, to assist the birds in taking messages over enemy lines.
Permission was finally granted by the police to operate buses with covered tops. It was feared that covering buses would make them too top-heavy.
By the early 1950s, congestion in central London had slowed buses to the pace of the first horse buses.
2. Cheap as Chips?
That’s Oyster and Chips, of course.
Mayor Livingstone has announced fare increases for buses (and the tube) for January 2007. If you pay on the bus at the time of boarding, the fare’ll increase by one-third, to £2.00. That’s nothing compared to the tube, where the £1.50 cash fare goes up by some 180 per cent to £4.00. That’s enough for an infrequent Oysterless visitor such as me to walk in future, not that I use the tube, preferring instead the bus.
But if you have an Oyster, the £1 its costs at peak on the bus is frozen. Off peak bus fares increase by 25 per cent, to £1 – this is a significant rise in itself but at least the one day cap remains at £3 with Oyster – as cheap as travel around Bournemouth and cheaper, let’s face it, than Portsmouth and Bristol. And a one-day bus pass remains at £3.50 cash.
Will all this be the virtual end of cash fares on the buses, now down from 10 per cent in 2005 to five per cent this year? Oyster now makes more sense than ever, even for tourists – unless you have one and fail to “touch in and touch out”. If you forget, it’ll cost £4 per day.
It's interesting that if you are going short or medium distances on the tube at £4.00 each way, if you have a car, you may as well pay the £8 congestion charge. No doubt some visitors will.
