More capital public transport facts

London bus facts

The word bus comes from 'Omnibus', a Latin word meaning 'for all people'.
A horse bus or tram needed 12 horses per day.
In 1900 50 000 horses were at work moving more than 2 000 000 passengers each day.
100 years ago, 1000 tonnes of horse manure was swept up from London's streets every day - that's the same weight as 500 elephants.
Travelling on early buses was bumpy because of solid rubber tyres. But by 1927 many buses had pneumatic tyres which made journeys smoother.
Fuel shortages in the Second World War (1939-1945) meant that some buses were powered by gas producing trailers.
In the 1960s and 1970s London buses were sold to Ceylon, South Africa and the Bahamas where they continued to give good service.
Buses make up 1% of the traffic on the road but carry 14% of the road users.
On average a bus transports 29 people per journey, whilst a car carries between 1 and 2 people per journey.
15 billion passengers have travelled on London's buses since 1910. That's three times the population of the whole world.
There are 500 different bus routes in London, and that 60 of them are special routes for school children?
Every day, four million people make a journey on London buses - that's more than the population of Eire travelling around London on buses each day.
Each London bus travels up to 1.2 million kilometres (750 000 miles) in its lifetime - that's the same distance as a trip to the moon and back, or 30 times around the world.
There are 5 500 buses in London, using 275 000 litres (60 500 gallons) of diesel per day - that's enough diesel to fill this room twice over.
The average speed of a London bus is 18 kilometres (11 miles) per hour.
The longest daytime bus route is the 296 between Ilford and Harold Wood - a total of 32.6 kilometres (20.3 miles).
The first woman bus driver was called Jill Viner. She started work in 1974 and drove on route 65 between Chessington and Ealing.
The longest serving London bus driver was Mr F J Miller who worked on the buses for 48 years.
A London bus weighs about 7000kg (7 tons) - that's as heavy as a Tyrannosaurus Rex!
A new London bus costs over ?100 000 - that's enough money to buy a house.
Vandalism on London Buses costs ?1.5 million every year - that's enough money to buy 15 new buses.
There are countdown displays in 1 500 bus stops throughout London telling people how long they have to wait for the next bus. By 2005, there will be countdown displays in 4 000 bus stops.
Today London transport is responsible for 17 000 bus stops, 36 bus stations, provision of information, route planning and the levels of fares.

London transport in figures

The total passengers carried by public road transport:
1933-4: 3 396 000 118.
1959-60: 3 267 000 000.
1974-5: 2 056 000 000.
In 1896 each person in London made 165 journeys on public transport. This grew to 511 journeys per person in the 1920s.
Staff employed by London Transport from 1930s-1998 were
1930s: 100 000 people.
1956: 87 000 people.
1998: 18 149 people.
Today London Transport is still one of London's largest employers.

What the people said:
"The wheels used to bang-bang along the joints in the track, on the foggy nights it was a great help to most traffic to know the tram was on the road so you could keep behind him" Charles Dormer worked as a tram driver from 1919, then drove a trolley bus and retired from London transport in 1972.

" We were skidding all over the place and to make things worse, people (would) rush out and clean up horse droppings and then rush back (so) you never knew where they're coming from. It was a terrible job to get out of a skid, the biggest hazard was (to get) caught in tram lines, I've had many a tram come and hit me up the back" Walter Cook, 1920s bus driver.

"There was another bomb on Theobalds Road, the fire from that smouldered for weeks. We used to take the bus over the hosepipes, it was really traumatic. I was on duty when one of our clippies was killed"
Eileen Polley worked as a bus conductress during the Second World War (1939-1945).

"I came in from cricket on a Saturday night, and on the radio London Transport wanted these people urgently, and I got up Monday morning and went and registered. I was in Hackney Garage the following week"
Keith Hunte was recruited as a bus driver in 1961.

"Sometimes when you got a bad load of coal it was hard to make the engine go, with good coal and the blowers on, the steam would only take a few minutes. There was a lot of thick smoke in those dirty tunnels, we were given overalls to wear."
George Spiller (b. 1884), started working on the London Underground steam trains in 1902 and retired in 1947.

London underground facts:

In the late 19th century the Chairman of the Metropolitan District Railway Company, Sir Edward Watkin, wanted his company to run trains from London to Paris through a channel tunnel.
It took 14 years (1828 - 1842) and cost 10 lives to build the first tunnel under the Thames. The second tunnel only took 10 months to complete.
The longest continuous tunnel is the Northern line between East Finchley and Morden - 27.8 kilometres (17 1/3 miles).
Nearly 500 trains serve 269 stations on 392 kilometres (240) miles of track.
At the busiest times a station like Oxford Circus can have up to 22 500 people passing through each hour.
In 1997-1998 over 832 million journeys were taken on the Underground.
The busiest station is Victoria - 86 million passages a year passing through.
The longest escalator in Western Europe - Angel station on the Northern line - is 60m (197 ft) long.
The London underground needs enough electricity daily to light a city the size of York, to power escalators, ticket machines, ticket barriers and signals.

Posted By: Dave in France on June 7th 2005 at 16:02:17

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