Routemaster gets chance of a reprieve

Two of the leading candidates for London mayor are backing a campaign to save the city's ageing but popular Routemaster buses from the wrecker's yard.

Two of the leading candidates for London mayor are backing a campaign to save the city's ageing but popular Routemaster buses from the wrecker's yard.

Ken Livingstone, who hopes to win the Labour nomination, made the retention of the distinctive red double-deckers an early campaign promise. Last week he was joined by Steve Norris, the Conservative candidate. Both men are promising to keep the buses on the road for another 15 years, and to start the hunt for a "son of Routemaster", which, ideally, would be a modern bus which incorporates the best design features of the Fifties original.

This is likely to include the "hop-on, hop-off" open door at the back and, as far as Mr Livingstone is concerned, a conductor. Despite its huge popularity, the Routemaster has just managed to avoid the scrapyard since the Seventies, surviving moves to replace it by London Transport, which favours cheaper, one-man-operated vehicles, and an attempt to ban it as unsafe by Brussels.

It seems that their speed through the traffic has kept London's buses running on the capital's clogged routes.

The latest threat comes from the new cash-free payment system, which London Transport is preparing to introduce in a couple of years' time. A "smart card" for passengers is expected to produce a dramatic improvement in the speed of one-man-operated buses, removing the Routemaster's main advantage at a stroke.

And, ominously, there is no guarantee from London Transport that the new technology will be used on the ageing fleet of older buses.

But even with the likely backing of London's mayor, the future of the Routemaster looks grim because, in 2017, the Disability Discrimination Act will make the Routemaster illegal, along with any other bus that cannot be used by people in wheelchairs.

The Routemaster was designed by AEC in Southall and Park Royal and was custom-built for London streets from Meccano-style parts which, over the years, proved endlessly replaceable and interchangeable. Its smooth curves and interior were influenced by industrial designer Douglas Scott. Already running for 40 years, the buses make themselves useful abroad even when not wanted here, carrying tourists in the US and Japan and passengers in Sri Lanka.

News that the Routemaster must, eventually, head for the final terminus has saddened passengers and aficionados alike.

"They're obviously an icon in London," said Ken Kelling of the London Transport Museum. "We get a lot of interest in them as traditional icons and as a masterpiece of design."

But even the editor of the specialist Classic Bus magazine, Gavin Booth, accepted that, by 2017, their time will have come. "It's good to see old buses still around, but if they're not providing the quality of service then perhaps we have to move on." Apart from which, he explained, by 2017 most of them will have fallen apart.