The Scottish bus industry is in crisis. Costs soar and passenger numbers decline. Services are cut, and buses become an even less attractive alternative to the car. Meanwhile, disorder has become ingrained in a minority of young people travelling for free on their National Entitlement Cards, and the lonely figure of the driver, isolated in his or her cab, is expected to deal with that, too.
Add the intricacies of fare collection, trying to run to time on congested roads, dealing with members of the public, who can present a whole variety of challenges, low pay, and shift work, and it explains why it’s difficult to recruit and keep drivers.
Between 1969 and 1972, I worked over my university holidays and weekends on Western SMT buses, from Mearns and Thornliebank garages, conducting for three years and driving for one. In Holiday’s Busman, I tell, warts and all, what life on the platform and in the cab was really like, from a busman’s perspective.
The hours were long and the job sometimes dangerous. Driving was physical, before today’s automatic gearboxes and power steering, while all fares were in cash, strictly accounted for through a heavy ticket machine and cash bag.
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But the camaraderie of conductors, conductresses and drivers kept us going through thick and thin. There was time for a blether at the terminus. Crews worked together for years, supported one another, and got to know their passengers. Best of all, drivers weren’t dying of loneliness as they are today. Your guard, as we called conductors, was always with you, ready to help, if, and when, trouble came calling, and it often did.
As guards, we kept order on Friday and Saturday nights, after the pubs emptied at the back of 10, in those far off times, while school kids, who associated the word ‘bus’ and ‘riot’ , and they haven’t changed today, were kept under our thumbs. If we needed to remove aggressive drunks, then the driver was summoned, and the two of us would put the miscreant off, to the relief of law–abiding passengers, who were reassured and felt safe.
Today, in sole charge of a bus, despite having mobile phones and radios that we didn’t have in the past, a driver is effectively on his or her own, so that leaving the cab to quell unruly behaviour, especially on the top deck, is virtually impossible. The result is that neds rule, and even more decent passengers are put off from taking the bus.
Conductors and conductresses were shown the door a few years after I left the buses in 1972, and drivers were given both jobs to do, but, certainly not double the pay. Operators were desperate to cut costs in the face of falling passenger numbers, but even more would-be passengers were discouraged further by appalling farebox systems which demanded the exact exact money for a fare. Change was not on offer and this was long before tapping on and off, which although an improvement, can’t beat a clippie for banter and safety.
And, whereas conductor-operated buses swept up to stops, swallowed up the queue and set off seconds later, today’s buses sit for several minutes at stops as drivers take the fares. Passengers had time to sit down before the guard came round to issue tickets at their seats. That was customer service, rather than today’s shoddy, self-service, in which the passenger does all the work, so there’s no incentive at all to travel by bus.
So, bring back the conductor, if not on all routes, then, at least on busy city ones, creating much-needed jobs, making bus travel more attractive for passengers, and, best of all, taking away the incredible strain that bus drivers are under, as they struggle to do what was a separate job, as well as their own, on over-crowded roads.
Looking back to my own days on the platform and in the cab, I can see a happier bus workforce, conductors and drivers each doing their own jobs well, and much happier passengers, too. None of us on the job could have imagined it any other way, then, and, today, if conductors did make a comeback, it would be just the ticket that the ailing bus industry needs, not just to survive, but to flourish.
Let’s hope we hear the cry “FERRRS PULLEEZE!” Again before too long.
Holiday’s Busman is published by Stenlake at £12.95
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