Buses have been in the news of late, as the Labour government has granted all local authorities the potential power to take control of services in the area by being able to set timetables and routes and award franchises to operators to better meet transport needs in their areas. These are powers previously only held by London and more recently Manchester, after the national bus network was privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives in the mid-1980s. This month, however, also sees the 70th birthday of arguably the most famous bus ever built – and one that was the product of paternalistic municipalism rather than market forces.
It was on 24 September 1954 that the original Routemaster bus was first unveiled to the general public at the Commercial Motor Show in Earl’s Court. As the last bus to be purposely built for the capital by London Transport – then a monolithic public body whose empire, thanks to its Greenline bus services, extended far into the suburban home counties – it was to be the culmination of a line of vehicles that can be traced back to 1910. Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter Utilising lightweight aluminium construction developed in the air industry and adopted by LT engineers following their stint building Handley Page bombers during the Second World War, it was among the most technically advanced buses of its era.
Boasting power-assisted steering, independent .