With so many companies running London's routes, it can be a nightmare just getting home

It was a trivial episode made worse by the heat of a sweltering August rush hour in London's West End. The packed Number 10 bus had stopped outside Marks & Spencer at the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street.

It was a trivial episode made worse by the heat of a sweltering August rush hour in London's West End. The packed Number 10 bus had stopped outside Marks & Spencer at the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street.

You could hear tempers fraying as a young man tried to board, carrying what looked like a bicycle frame minus wheels. "No way," said the conductor, a big man, not the sort to be argued with. But the bicycle youth did argue. "I've been on two buses with this already," he said, and barged his way on.

There was a furious tinging of the bus bell, the driver got off and the conductor announced: "I'm not taking this bus further. Everybody off." Tourists looked bemused, children coloured with embarrassment and commuters cursed under their breath. As they filed on to the pavement everyone was given a ticket which the conductor said could be used to take them on to their destination.

Now, the Number 10 route is one of the Great Bus Journeys of London. Not only is it operated by Routemasters (the classic double-decker of the Flanders and Swann song), but you can also travel a long distance without changing - from Hammersmith in the west to Archway in the north. Best of all, it links the three main shopping centres of Kensington, Knightsbridge, and Oxford Street, taking in Euston and King's Cross stations (and my home in Camden Town) on the way.

Unfortunately, frequency isn't one of the strong points of the 40-year-old buses, so after waiting 15 minutes in withering heat for another Number 10 to come along, I walked up to Oxford Circus to get the much nippier C2 minibus to Camden. I waved my substitute ticket at the driver, who pronounced: "You can't get on."

A tinier man than the conductor on the Number 10, he was even more bullish: "You can't use your ticket because it's issued by a different company." (It wasn't; both companies are owned by Metroline, which is a subsidiary of the national conglomerate Arriva.) I pointed out that all companies come under the umbrella of London Buses, the quango that issues the franchises to the 34 private operators in London, and that I had already paid a legal fare to go to Camden Town, which I had forfeited through no fault of my own.

The reply was blunt: "If you want to get on my bus, you've got to pay."

By this time, the queue behind me was getting restless. I paid my £1 fare a second time - mainly to avoid getting clobbered by my impatient fellow passengers. The cost was hardly a fortune for a well-paid journalist. But I thought of my 12-year-old daughter and her friends, who often jump on a bus with only the change in their pockets. Or the tourists, who must have been baffled by an organisation that calls itself London Buses, but isn't so at all.

In fact, the shambles was even worse than it seemed. I rang the "London Buses customer relations line" printed inside the bus to be told: "Ah, we don't run London's buses any more - that's Ken Livingstone's lot, Transport for London." But they would graciously put me through to the bus garage. No luck there, since they couldn't deal with matters "out of office hours". (In fact it was only 4.30pm.)

By this stage, I decide I really do want my £1 back. So I ring Transport for London, where a press officer, Chris Bailey, says rather nervously that his organisation has just taken over, so I had better fax him. Four days later, there's no reply. On the fifth day, they tell me they have investigated and the problem is that I am "trying to get to Camden Town by going on a route that doesn't go through Camden Town".

"But it does," I protest. "Look at your own bus map." On day six, the reply comes back: "Yes, both the buses go to Camden Road [very close to my home in both cases], but the routes do not cross." The problem was, they said, that I was looking for a ticket for a specific destination and I "did not buy a ticket for that".

Any sensible person would have given up at this point, since London bus tickets are not specific to destinations. They cost only two prices - either £1 or 70p, depending on whether you travel in the inner or outer zone. And I hadn't bought the ticket in the first place: it had been issued to me because the bus operator had failed to get me home.

But like all true bureaucrats, Transport for London could not resist twisting the knife with a follow-up letter, which chirruped: "So keen is [Ken Livingstone] to improve London's transport that he has elected to chair the board of Transport for London himself."

Well, here are some facts the Mayor might like to ponder on behalf of Londoners and the 29 million people who visit the capital every year. In 1951, when London was more modestly sized, there were seven million bus passenger journeys a year. Today there are just four million, and the average journey is getting shorter.

So far, the Mayor's main pronouncement on bus policy has been that he is going to prolong still further the life of the elderly Routemaster, which is only kept on the road with engines bought from India.

Here are some other suggestions which might attract Londoners like me back on to the buses. First, issue timed tickets (say, for two hours) which would allow passengers to change routes in the centre without paying again, as they can on the Tube. (These are currently sold at only seven out of 17,000 bus stops.) Second, issue travel cards on the buses themselves instead of forcing people to search out the few shops that issue them.

Lastly, the big question. Since there's no competition between the 34 private operators that run London's 800 routes, what's the point in having them - and the bureaucracy they generate? The old London Transport, introduced by Peter Mandelson's grandfather, Herbert Morrison, in the 1930s seemed to work perfectly well for half a century.

By the way, if I ever get my £1 back, I shall donate it to the charity that preserves old Routemasters - in museums and off the road.

* Additional reporting by Jonathan Thompson.