please empty your brain below

Just got home. 20 hours awake, completely cream crackered. My report to come too ... eventually.

Good grief.

DG learns assertive behaviour.

Well, he must have, to get on the last bus to Bow.

Impressed

This has been great stuff on the Routemasters - my fond memory of them is when I lived in Upton Park, and I could take the 15 from virtually right outside my front door and into the city. Fabulous. Yes, the tube journey would have been significantly shorter, but not nearly as heartening.

And yet . . .

While I'm sad to see the Routemasters disappearing from the streets of London, I have friends who are wheelchair users, friends who are visually impaired, and it's completely true that they're just not accessible. They're not even particularly accessible to older people who might not be quite so nimble at getting on and off public transport. And to be honest, I can't really think of a solution to this problem. I'm always left wondering what's more important: keeping a symbol of London on the road, mainly because it is just that - a romantic, memorable symbol of this city - or making public transport as accessible as possible to everyone.

The final week on the 8s was a fairly good solution to the accessibility v nostalgia problem - 10 Routemasters plus 20 or so modern buses running the service, so if you couldn't get on the first bus in your wheelchair you could almost certainly get on the next.

The unhappy thing about the post-Routemaster replacements is that they too aren't particularly accessible. For the want of a wheelchair appearance which might happen on my routes six times a year (and I take a LOT of buses), the bus's low-floor design means that twenty people go without seats. And the seats that they do get are in pairs so neither seated party can get comfortable. To let the wheelchair move around you have to take handrails out, which means the oldies can't grab onto anything and suffer more accidents.
My mum gets about in a wheelchair now and I would never, never put her on a bus. It's not fair to her or to the people that have to suffer to make room for her. If she goes anywhere, she's getting driven. I think Dial-a-Ride and Mobility Buses should have had extensive expansion, so that the disabled can be treated with respect by trained staff who are qualified to handle their requirements, without having to be just thrown to the lions with everybody else, with Mobility Bus staff laid off.
Inclusivity in its present state isn't the answer - the Disability Discrimination Act, for all its laudable and necessary aims, has ended up being discriminatory in itself - to everyone else.
And amid all of this fringe obsession, our culture and heritage has been allowed to disappear down the shitter, with no suitable replacement to be proud of.

A sad day for Route 8 - and yet another sad day for the Routemaster. Despite some comments I've made in the past re accepting the new for the old - it is rather hard to swallow the fact that something so symbolic of London (and Britain) is gradually disappearing to be replaced with something else that seems characterless - and as Matt says - something that leaves a lot less to be proud of. Even though I try hard to positive about the changes - there are so many things that I feel ought to be made to last a lot longer (and even forever) but instead are consigned to news archives, digital photo collections and museums etc. I really wish I could not only afford to buy one of the RMs - but also to park it somewhere - and maybe even drive it somewhere - sometime - so that future gens can enjoy it in years to come ....

One thing that was obvious yesterday is how many people are determined to preserve old Routemasters in roadworthy condition. You'll be able to see (and ride) loads of them (for free) at Routemaster 50, a big celebratory jamboree in Finsbury Park next month.

My bus hasn't arrived yet...

That was a good send off for the 8's. I stood at Victoria pondering whether I had it in me to take in a journey to Bow and then trawl back to Streatham Hill after...but I did(on the white Stagecoach livered RML) I was glad I did it. Yes there needs to be progress, but taking out all the seats and making everyone stand doesn't help accesibility. A network of parallel accessible routes with trained staff and a schedule to match would have been the smart way forward, instead of the one size fits all products we're forced to travel on. Rant over!

I'm not entirely sure why but, I was reminded of the travel program, "Last Train to Medicine Hat", when reading this.

From my experience (not in London) when buses lost their conductors they ran slower because the driver had to issue the tickets as well as drive the bus which meant that they spent longer at each stop.

Bendy buses were tried here (Aberdeen) about 10 years ago. I'm not entirely sure if they were successful as I'm only aware of 2 actually being in service. It was a strange experience to travel on one, especially sitting near the back.











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