meister bus

London is buses. The city might have the oldest underground train system, continuously running for nearly 150 years, and the longest history of electrification. It might have one of the world's biggest underground networks with nearly 300 stations and 400 kilometers of track, and every visitor's image of the city might be influenced by the iconic red-encircled blue Underground sign and the highly stylized tube map with its straight lines and 45-degree angles. But underneath the celebrity and the buzz of the tube, London is buses.

Buses are everywhere. If you want to go from A to B, hop on a bus. It doesn't matter where A is, it doesn't matter where B is, and it certainly doesn't matter what time it is. There's always a bus. It might not be a direct bus, but it will take you closer. The journey will not be quick, but it will eventually come to an end – inevitably at the intended destination. (If Wikipedia is to be believed, there are 19,000 bus stops in London.)

For a long time, buses remained essentially unchanged. The Routemaster dominated totally. Bright red and double-decked, it would rove the streets of London like a gigantic walk-in closet on wheels. There was a driver up front and a conductor in the back, but there were no doors. Passengers could hop on and off as they pleased. And though most people seemed pleased enough, over the last twenty years the uniformity of the bus system has been broken and many a tradition abolished.

As the open Routemaster was showing its age, replacements were introduced, mostly modern incarnations of the double-decker without a conductor but with doors. In addition, short single-decker buses appeared in the early 2000s, joined, a few years later, by their longer, articulated cousins. Their local moniker, bendy bus, could be considered affectionate, but the bendy is almost universally reviled. I cannot say why, but Londoners somehow believe it to be responsible for the death of the beloved Routemaster, the last of which disappeared from regular service in 2005. (These days, two heritage routes are still running these relics.)

In 2007, a circus clown took over City Hall. With bushy hair and bumbling manners, he didn't act the politician. Spontaneity shaped his agenda, and his antics got his name in the press. He had only one issue when running for office: He'd bring the Routemaster back. People elected him for this. (There was nothing else to elect him for.)

Boris Johnson's tenure as Mayor of London hasn't been as disastrous as most pundits gloomily predicted. He has indeed shown a keen interest in Transport for London, the city-controlled operator of London's public transport, for example by organizing the biggest binge ever staged in the tunnels of the Underground and more recently by bringing Tube Lines, a catastrophic private-public partnership, back into full public ownership.

And just today, he came true on his lonely campaign promise: The plans for a new Routemaster was proudly unveiled. I can't say that I like it much, what with half a dozen doors and a sloping back that looks dated already, but here we go. According to estimates, the bus will be much costlier than the current double-decker and less efficient at busing people around than a bendy, but if we're getting something new, we might as well get something special, something unique. After all, London is buses.