A modification to the rear door of Boris Johnson’s flagship “New Routemaster” bus may signal the beginning of the end of one of its key electoral selling points

In October it emerged that the next batch of Boris Johnson’s “New Routemaster” buses would not operate with the two crew members on board - a driver and a dilute descendant of a conductor - he’d promised they all would when seeking election in 2008. We now know that future New Routemasters will close the door on any chance of these “customer assistants”, as they’ve come to be known, being restored and in the process design out passengers’ option to “hop on” or “hop off” the bus when it is stationery between stops.



The door in question is the one at the back of the vehicle. On current New Routemaster models these open by folding inwards, which means they can be kept open while the bus is on the move. This only happens, though, if a customer assistant is present. With customer assistants officially dropped, leaving the rear door open between stops is no longer permissible. This has opened the way for the rear door to be radically modified.



On the newest batch, to run on route 73, it will no longer open by folding inwards, but by sliding outwards as the middle door does. The platform pole will disappear too. The result, thinks Transport for London (TfL), will be a wider, more accessible doorway. But it also seems to confirm that the key political selling points of the New Routemaster idea have been abandoned.



For Johnson, reviving the open platform and “conductors” was not only about nostalgia for the public transport classic Ken Livingstone had laid to rest. It was a vehicular remedy for what Conservatives regard as a morally debilitating health and safety nannyism. Here’s Johnson from his Telegraph column just two years ago:

This bus stands for freedom, and choice, and personal responsibility. It not only fulfills a promise often made to Londoners by bringing back conductors; it restores to the streets of London the open platform at the rear – and in so doing, it restores the concept of a reasonable risk...if the bus got stuck in traffic, or at the lights, you knew that you weren’t a prisoner. You were allowed to get on and off at will, provided the thing wasn’t moving, and now that freedom and benefit will be restored...It is, as far as I know, one of the few recent examples of a public policy that actually gives back, to sentient and responsible adults, the chance to take an extra risk in return for a specific reward.

And for Johnson, this bus-as-metaphor travelled further still:

We need to develop this thought, because I worry that in the post-crisis world, we have become all too paranoid, too risk-averse. Yes, the banks made grotesque errors, largely because they could not understand the risks they were taking. But unless we allow businesses and banks to take reasonable risks, they will never hit the jackpot at all.

Sadly, those grotesque errors have extracted a heavy price, and TfL is paying part of it. That’s why “conductors” on New Routemasters have proved an expensive luxury that is already heavily rationed, and why the “hop on, hop off” philosophy is one the London public purse is struggling to afford. I still quite like Boris’s Bus, primarily its plush interior. But it is less and less the bus he promised to provide and more and more a telling symbol of his political mentality.

All previous installments of Boris’s Bus (A Political Journey) can be read here.