82 The London Bus
F
ollowing a boom in
the early postwar
years, the number
of passengers
using London’s
buses began to fall in 1952, with
the rate of loss accelerating
rapidly after the seven-week
drivers’ strike in 1958 (see p14).
While part of this decline
was down to a reduction in
London’s population, which
fell from 8.2million in 1951 to
6.6million 30 years later, much
of it was driven by increasedcar ownership and changes in
lifestyle. The spread of television,
for example, meant that fewer
leisure trips were taken to the
cinema.
Initially, London Transport
responded to these losses
by simply reducing service
levels as a way of controlling
costs, although this made the
remaining services even less
attractive and so hastened the
decline.
A more radical move was
the adoption of driver-onlyoperation of certain routes. This
was employed to a limited, but
growing degree in the Country
Area, but all Central Area routes
had been operated by a driver
and conductor since withdrawal
of the 20-seat Leyland Cubs in
1949.
Negotiations with the trades
unions were protracted and it
was not until November 1964
that the first three red routes —
all operated with RF-class AEC
Regal IV single-deckers — lost
their conductors. It took just50 Years Ago
ABOVE: MB636,
one of the large
fleet of AEC
Merlins bought
for the reshaping
plan, at St Albans
garage. Most of
these buses were
withdrawn after
around seven
years’ service.
TONY WILSON
In 1968, London Transport began implementing a change to
shorter suburban routes that fed into key interchange points. It
came to be considered a failure, yet similar ideas are once again
being proposed for the 2020s and beyond.The reshaping plan