Dave,

I'm not sure what you mean by "tried and failed" can you be more specific?
I'm only aware that since the 70's conductors have become almost extinct
excepting parhaps on routes like the 159 which travel through the most
congested parts of London.

From your description of a conventional bus, I imagine that your experience
doesn't go back too far. For me the Routemaster was the last of the
conventional buses before the "biscuit tins" began to appear in the early
70's. These were a complete disaster as they decided to do away with
conductors and install a turnstile system which jammed constantly, and the
driver would have to be getting out of his seat forever attempting to fix
the problem. Eventually these ticket machines were completely roped off.

Now back in the days of the Routemaster and it's RT predecessor which
incidentally still provides service in many other parts of the world, there
were queues for buses. Any conductor worth his salt would ensure that
passengers standing in the queue would be allowed on first. Buses always
stopped at compulsory stops and the conductor would check that passengers
were safely seated before instructing the driver to proceed. There were no
feet on seats or passengers sneaking on the back to avoid paying fares and I
can't recall ever being in the situation where a bus had been brought to a
standstill due to an all out brawl or robbery on the top deck. I wish I
could say the same today.

Even today if you take a look at the windows on a bus, although it can be
seen to some degree on all of them, the ones with the windows graffitied to
near opacity are the modern kind that don't have conductors. Can you see
these buses getting anywhere near the 45 odd years service that Routemasters
have provided so far? We pay immense amounts of money to replenish and
refurbished vandalised buses and something as short sighted as removing
conductors in the interests of economy astonishes quite a few of us that
knew the "good old days" before anti-social behaviour, seemingly sanctioned
by LT, began to make buses dirty, uncomfortable and intimidating.

Now if this was what you meant by tried and failed, quite frankly I just
can't see what better benefits there could be.

Jeff Mowatt





"Dave" wrote in message
...
Jeff Mowatt writes

I can tell you for one that I supported Ken Livingstone's campaign
financially purely in the hope that he would live up to the promise of
re-introducing conductors on all London routes Since this and a lot of
other improvements didn't happen and a lot of excuses have been made,
I've
come to regard our Mayor as a bit of a flake in more recent times.

Indeed, Ken did promise more conductors on buses. (I know that London
Buses purchased Routemasters for refurbishment and re-use, although I
can't remember if that was pre-GLA or not.) Use of conductors on
'conventional' buses was tried and failed.

So what does he do, press on with the conductors-policy even though it's
shown to be no good - or try something else that will bring better
benefits? Most politicians would tend to be dogmatic and press on with
implementing a flawed policy (e.g. Maggie & her poll tax), I much prefer
a politician who takes the pragmatic course.

--
Dave