Ding ding! This bus terminates here
- 9 Dec 05, 12:00 AM
It's been dragging on for weeks, even months, but today - finally - runs across London, before being put out to retirement on limited 'heritage routes'.. Now, is it just Crippled Monkey's imagination that everywhere I look, the finger seems to be pointing squarely at 'accessibility' for being the main reason why these "much-loved design classics" (as everyone seems to call them) are being taken off the road? The spotty bus anoraks, in particular, appear to be up in arms that, hey, disabled people might just want to get on a bus occasionally too, without realising that fifty-year-old Routemasters might as well be an assault course for all the use they are to us.
Ouch readers, reasonable as ever, have been talking about this topic on our messageboard - and the general opinion seems to be that, yes, a bright, shiny red Routemaster running down Oxford Street or wherever is indeed a lovely sight, but it just ain't accessible. Even our own Tanni Grey-Thompson, in a recent column about how the accessibility of public transport in the capital is improving, couldn't help admiring the old vehicles, while noting that it's not just crips who couldn't catch that bus:
"Now, many people bemoan the demise of the Routemaster double-decker, and as we sat and watched them go past we had to agree that they did look nice. We laughed as people tried to run after them and jumped on and off while they were moving, but we also gave sympathetic glances to the pregnant women who didn't make the sprint."
Comment of the day, however, goes to Bob Stanley of pop band Saint Etienne, writing in The Guardian under the superb headline of :
"Yet much of the recent caterwauling about its demise and replacement by the bendy bus has come from the kind of folks who rail against bus lanes from the comfort of their gas guzzlers. None of it has come from mums with pushchairs, anyone on a trip back from the supermarket or, most obviously, disabled people. If an apologist like the writer Iain Sinclair lost his legs tomorrow you can bet he wouldn't be campaigning for the cutesy old Routemaster."
Couldn't have put it better myself. Crippled Monkey is off to catch an accessible bendy bus home. Have a good weekend, y'all.
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