Oxford Bus Company

This past weekend I took a vintage bus trip.  The driver sits in a self-contained compartment that you can see at the front of the bus. Since he has no contact with the passengers, a conductor was required to  issue tickets and ring stops.

I rode in the lower level of the bus to the company's central garage.


They had a new bus painted in the manner of the original horse drawn trams from 125 years ago.

We boarded a contemporary bus and went through the bus wash. This is the picture of the blue brushes coming by the window. Very exciting.

Then we walked through the maintenance garage.  The sight of a double decker bus up on a set of jacks was quite something.  

I had seen the notices that that particular bus is covered by closed circuit TV, but it is more covered than I thought.  We learned that each bus has as many as eight cameras.  

We also saw the nerve center of the system, a computer room that keeps track of all the buses via GPS.  The computers are connected to Google maps so they can bring up the exact location of a bus in real time.  They attempt to keep the schedule going, rerouting buses around floods or traffic jams.

The Oxford bus System is the greenest in England. The sign on the back of this bus reads, "A sexy particulate trap thingy makes this exhaust cleaner than a vicar's sermon." New buses are made by Mercedes and have scrubbers  to reduce exhaust fumes.  This works.  I do not even smell the exhaust when a bus draws up to the stop. In addition, the acceleration, breaking and speed of each bus are regulated to save on gas.

We then boarded the vintage bus for our trip back to the city centre. I made my way up the stair to the upper level.  The ceiling was low and the aisle was narrow.  The conductors had to be small and agile.