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| My first bus - Farringdon Park to Preston Town Centre |
On the Ember bus back from Glasgow, I began daydreaming about my lifetime experience of buses. Over the past eighteen months, I have given up going to Glasgow by car; the traffic congestion is horrendous. Parking is too expensive or dependent on an App (RingGo) for all on-street parking. The Council has effectively hived off one of its income streams to a commercial money maker. There are no longer any public toilets in Glasgow, but Ember buses terminate at Buchanan Street bus station, which is handy for the conveniences at John Lewis.
Ember buses have revived my faith in buses. They operate with new electric coaches that travel at least as quick as cars and have internet access and comfortable seats. Booking could not be simpler with an App that shows you where your bus is and sends you a message if it is more than 4 minutes late. They have recently acquired a massive grant from the Scottish Government Zero Emission Bus Challenge Fund to purchase a further 100 Yutong electric buses. This will allow them to complete a network of routes between Scotland's cities and main towns, a sustainable alternative to car travel. And looking at the passengers on Ember Buses and talking to fellow travellers has convinced me that this is happening. For the most part, they are folks who have forsaken their cars for less hassle and the comfort of the Ember coaches. Admittedly, many use their Entitlement Cards, but the aim of the net-zero plan was to reduce car travel by 20%. The other losers to the Ember buses could be ScotRail, which may be slightly faster, but also far more costly and less comfortable.
The last time I was so excited by bus travel was as a child, when buses were the only way to travel in most towns and cities after the trams and trolley buses were scrapped. I travelled from my grandparents' house, where we stayed, to the town centre for shopping on the Farrindon Park route twice a week. It had a 5-minute frequency, and the buses ran to tight timetables, dictated by work hooters and school bells. Going to school, I became a great fan of step-on back platforms that could be accessed by running after the bus and jumping on as it accelerated and then being admonished by conductors in municipal uniforms with shiny ticket machines and a normally cheery countenance.
There were also long-distance coaches like the Ribble Leyland Tigers that took me to London when I was three. Apparently, I became very worried when we stopped in Birmingham for a break, shouting, "Where's the driver?" as he drifted off for a cup of tea and a pee. Ribble buses also provided a wonderful service in the north west, and I was taken on regular trips to Blackpool, Lytham and Morecombe by doting grandparents. Further afield, Ribble buses facilitated Alfred Wainwright to travel from Kendal to all parts of the Lake District, from where he could climb 214 Lakeland Fells. They were eulogised and became immortalised in his seven books about the Lakeland Fells, now referred to as the Wainwrights. They were chosen as much by accessibility via the Ribble Bus timetable as by their height or difference in height from adjacent hills.
For 10 years, I travelled every day by bus to secondary school and then to university in the 1960s and early 70s. Living in Glasgow in the 1970s, I had the choice of bus or underground. In the 1980s, I used to run to work or occasionally catch the bus or use the car. Buses were slow on the clogged-up city centre roads and were smoke-filled on the upper deck. They became a source of disdain, as when Mrs Thatcher was alleged to have said: "If a man finds himself on a bus by the age of 26, he can count himself a failure." She didn't say this; according to Alistair Cook, it was attributed to the Duchess of Westminster, a cut-glass snob in the 1920s.
Mrs Thatcher did, however, introduce the 1985 Transport Act, which deregulated local bus services, allowing the privatisation of bus services. This led to the effective demise of local authority bus services in all but a few places: Lothian, Dumfries and Galloway, Nottingham, Cardiff, and Blackpool, which had also maintained its trams, amongst them. By the 1980s, buses were not a lifestyle way of travelling for those with cars. But they were the only way to travel for the poorest in society. Standards dropped, timetables became fictional, prices increased as competition between companies inevitably gave way to monopolies and further price increases.
In the early noughties, I was involved in a Scottish working group to introduce a Scottish-wide identity card. It involved the Scottish Executive (now Scottish Government), the Councils and the NHS. We were seeking to establish a citizens’ account or identity number integrating National Insurance numbers, NHS numbers and electoral roll and council tax address information from Councils. It was seen as a means of sharing information between Health, Education, Social Work, and Police, and a way to keep the electoral roll up to date and to give entitlement to council services like libraries, leisure facilities and school dinners. It would also have significantly reduced the number of people on the list of local medical practices. In Glasgow, there were over 10% more people on these lists than the total population. People did not tend to notify practices when they moved elsewhere.
The citizen account number would be linked to a single address, and this identity would provide the entitlement to a wide range of public services. It was going well, not least because of the creative work carried out by Dundee City Council, which had a working example of an identity card. Alas, following the 2007 election, the citizens’ account was dropped as a comprehensive scheme by the new government that was feart of the civil liberties lobby. The only parts that continued were the National Entitlement Card, essentially the bus pass, and a Proof of Age scheme, both of which were voluntary. Fears of Big Brother saw the rest of the initiative being too radical for our increasingly centralised democracy, which was too distant to understand the operational benefits of citizens' ID.
The Entitlement Card had an upside in that hundreds of thousands of pensioners and young people were given the freedom of Scotland by free Scottish-wide bus travel. Edinburgh trams were excluded, except for Edinburgh residents, despite being largely funded by the Scottish taxpayer. The mock-ups of the Entitlement Card were in the name of Winston Smith of Nineteen-Eighty-Four notoriety; perhaps there were some humourists in the Edinburgh City Council. Winston was fighting against Big Brother whilst getting laid by Julia.
After retirement, my Entitlement Card was used regularly to catch the 915 City Link Bus from Crianlarich to Skye. The bus was always full of elderly folk mesmerised by the scenery as they travelled across Rannoch Moor and through Glencoe or caught the views into Knoydart and the Five Sisters before reaching the Skye Bridge. It was a better tonic than a visit to the Doctor; the bus was a happy place. I was often queried about my age by the regular female driver as I heaved my rucksack onto the bus and asked to be dropped at a remote location in Glencoe or Glenshiel. I would spend two days walking over and camping in the hills, and get picked up the next day at another stop for the return journey. The flexibility and the comfort of a City Link bus were a prized service to explore the Scottish Mountains. Like the Ember Bus trips to the cities.
Yes, buses are becoming a lifestyle choice again as well as an essential public service.
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| Leyland Tiger - where's the driver |
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| Ribble Bus - Wainwright's Side Kick |
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| Glasgow Corporation Bus - Journey to Work in 1970s |
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| City Link Bus in Glencoe |
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| Ember Bus |
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| Someone's taking the piss |
