大象传媒

CHAPTER EIGHT

ONE MAN OPERATION

I spent fourteen happy years on the 701 and 725 coach roads until, in 1969, London Transport began 鈥淥MO鈥� working. Over a period of several months the drivers attended conductor school for a couple of days of intensive training on ticket issuing and waybill working and gradually the Green Line coaches became 鈥淥ne Man Operated鈥� 鈥� OMO. Within a year, most of the Green Line coaches throughout the fleet were working without conductors and it became evident that our days were numbered.

At first, London Transport was confident that all the buses and coaches would become OMO within two years and conductors within five years of retirement age were offered the chance to retire early, without the loss of pension rights. There were several reasons for the staff concerned to accept this offer. There were still plenty of other jobs available, it was possible to apply for a lump sum of several hundred pounds (depending on length of service and a clean record) instead of a small weekly pension and a few conductors leaving the job immediately would obviously find it easier to get a good job than if they waited until thousands became redundant. Those conductors who decided to hang on or were too young to apply for early retirement were easily absorbed on the bus rotas.

So it was back on the buses for me and I soon discovered that it wasn鈥檛 as easy to start bus work again at forty-nine as it was at thirty-five! The first few weeks were agony, up and down stairs all day after fourteen years on a single deck vehicle. My leg muscles ached, my arches threatened to collapse and I quickly decided to go on a diet and trim off some excess weight. At first I thought the extra exercise would take care of my weight problem 鈥� but no such luck 鈥� all it did was to sharpen my appetite and I gradually gained weight in the first few weeks!

Over the next five years I worked on the double deck 441 route. More and more routes went OMO until, at last, in 1976 even the 441 was taken over and the last stage of my employment began.

The TGWU had done its best for us and negotiated terms that allowed us to stay in employment should we wish to remain. All conductors were given the chance to train as drivers should we wish to do so. In the ordinary course of events a driver who failed the test was allowed a refresher course in the driving school and a second attempt to pass the test but conductors were allowed to go back to the school after each failure indefinitely; presumably until they finally passed or gave up the job in despair. Somehow I couldn鈥檛 see Auntie Doris, aged fifty-seven, and never piloting anything bigger than my bike, ever making it as a driver of a one man bus so I declined the offer, as did three other long service conductors, and the inspectors racked their brains in an attempt to keep us employed.

Sometimes the single deck OMO buses broke down in such numbers that the engineers couldn鈥檛 cope and out would come a double-decker again and one of us would be back on the platform again for a day or two 鈥� just like old times. Or something similar would happen at another garage in our area and we would be loaned out. We had to be paid for travelling to and from the foreign garage so that the actual work on the bus would only be half a duty. This suited us all. We soon learned the new roads and made new friends among the staff of the other garages and the travelling public was always glad to see us.

On the whole, I would say that the public did not like the changeover to one-man operation. Either the journeys took longer because of the delays at every stop while the driver took the fares and issued the tickets or the route had been speeded up in an attempt to overcome this fault and the ride became more uncomfortable as the driver cut corners and drove more aggressively in a, sometimes, vain attempt to keep to the new timetables. But it soon became obvious that the public was faced with the choice of one-man buses at reasonable fares or crew operated vehicles that cost so much to run that the fares would be too high for most passengers to afford.

By this time most households owned at least one car so buses carried fewer passengers and journeys were cut and the wait at bus stops became longer and longer as the timetables were trimmed in an attempt to make the remaining vehicles pay their way. Local authorities began to cut back on the subsidies they had always paid to the bus company to cover the uneconomic early and late journeys that had never been profitable anyway 鈥� and the end result was a further cut in services. It became unusual for buses to start before 6.30 a.m. and most were back in the garage by 10.30 p.m.

With the advent of television, video games and home computers more and more people stayed at home in the evenings and, even when the price of petrol started to rise, it was cheaper and far more convenient to use the car when the whole family went out together than to walk to a bus stop and sometimes wait for ages in all weathers for a bus which often left them with another walk at the other end of the journey and the prospect of having to return earlier than they wanted or face the prospect of losing the last bus and having to afford a taxi.

After a career in Public Transport spanning over thirty-five years you might think I would have some ideas that would bring the buses back to giving the public the service it took for granted for so long a time. I regret to say that I鈥檝e no such easy answer. While it is quite a simple task to chart the downward spiral to the situation as it stands today, the solution to the problems besetting the present time bus services has baffled brains much cleverer than my own. It has been suggested that Public Transport should be paid for by the local authorities as are the Ambulance and Fire Services, the waste disposal units and Public Libraries. But what would the local ratepayers have to say about financing a bus service that most of them never use? Get on a bus today and look around you. Most of the passengers are likely to be either elderly people paying half fares and using Pensioners Passes, children and students with free passes or ex-conductors with a sticky 鈥� like me.

I had hoped to be able to stay employed until I reached retiring age 鈥� sixty years old for a woman 鈥� but when I was in my fifty-ninth year in 1978 I was made an offer I couldn鈥檛 refuse 鈥� early retirement with redundancy pay and, due to my (almost) unblemished record, a free bus pass for the rest of my life.

I hope there will still be buses for just a few years longer even though I only ride once a week to go to the Post Office to collect my Old Age Pension. After all, people will always want buses 鈥� won鈥檛 they?

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