What will be remembered of Boris Johnson’s political career, do you reckon? Covid? The Boriswave, the immigration influx that saw over a million people a year enter the UK? The Boris bike? The best thing he did in office, to my mind, was, as London mayor, to introduce the Boris bus, which is now being phased out by his successor, Sadiq Khan. To get on a Boris bus is to swan around London on the best that public transport has to offer. It is not, admittedly, in the same league as the Routemaster bus it replaced – see below – but in itself, it is spacious inside and easy on the eye outside, with its elegant, rounded design. It’s worth waiting in a queue for.
Given the simple template for a London bus that we had once, it’s astonishing how much contemporary bus designers get wrong. There’s the seating system which obliges some passengers to face each other, knee to knee; the dramatically raised platforms for some seats. There are the ugly single deckers; the uncomfortable forward seat and hideous lighting on the new BYD BD11. In fact no bus other than the modern Routemaster is easy on the eye (though I take the point that any bus that turns up on time is a happy sight).
