On Apr 27, 10:50*pm, Ian Jelf wrote:
This surprised me:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8021703.stm

Ditto.

There's a few issues at play here. There does appear to be an
expectation amongst a significant number of buggy-wielding bus users
that they can - or should always be able to - get on a bus without
folding the buggy up. This is daft - those with kids in buggies should
be prepared to evict the little'un from said buggy and fold it up when
getting on the bus. I reckon it's also fair to say that babies in
prams should take priority over buggies - and of course wheelchair
users take priority over both (there is enough space in most buses for
a wheelchair and a buggy/pram though).

The other thing of course is the preponderance of ridiculous overlarge
4x4-style buggy and pram designs. There's no need for these huge
contraptions, especially in London! The fact they are so big is in and
of itself a problem with regards to bus use - it makes them difficult
to manoeuvre when inside the bus (and indeed outside on the street
to!), and also of course means they take up more than their fare share
of bus floor real-estate, which can result in there being less space
for other buggies.

The other issue with these mega-buggies however is that they're a
complete faff to fold up - these are not simple beasts, and thus don't
lend themselves to rapid stowing.

The answer of course is to have a simple back-to-basics pushchair -
easily collapsible with a nifty kick or kung-fu chop to the critical
artery - and then one is free of the burden of the 4x4 monster-buggy
and can be totally flexible.

I know plenty of friends and acquaintances who do - or did - just
this. If they expect the bus to be busy then the pushchair is already
folded up at the bus stop, otherwise they and their tot are poised to
evacuate and fold-up the pushchair if needs be - an action that takes
five seconds - and voila, they're on the bus going where they need to
be going rather than pathetically hanging around at the bus stop
waiting for ages until a bus with some spare floor space arrives.


The Children's Society are being daft. The basic thing is that this is
a side-effect of the success story that is the London bus network.
Parents with buggies should however get real and 'empower' themselves
instead of expecting some sort of silver service..

The TfL spokesperson quoted in the BBC article has it right, I think:
---quote---
Michael Weston, from TfL, said: "I think what we've done is that we've
made the bus network in London very, very accessible and we are seeing
the success of that in terms of a lot of buggy users being able to get
on the bus without folding their buggies.

"There are also a lot of wheelchair users using the bus network, so at
times we ask passengers to compromise and be flexible about how they
use the space on the buses."
---/quote---