Bicentenary Bliss: Celebrating 200 Years of Britain's Iconic Bus Industry Journey, Pride, and Service

An anniversary is always a good opportunity for a celebration. Twenty-first birthday, silver wedding, platty jubes… Buit a 200th anniversary, a bicentenary? Now this is worth celebrating – and it’s our bus industry that’s marking a milestone birthday.

Britain’s first bus service started in 1824, in Salford. John Greenwood was a tollkeeper at a place called Pendleton Bar, where he was in a good position to perceive the beginnings of commuting as he watched people walk almost three miles into Manchester’s growing cottonopolis. He put on a horse-drawn bus – not a stage carriage booked in advance and running once a day, but a turn-up-and-go frequent facility, picking up people along the way. In other words, a bus service. The fare was six old pence (2.5p) which was quite expensive, but Mr Greenwood didn’t want labourers and ne’er-do-wells on his buses.

Greenwood’s venture prospered and it was the genesis of thousands of services across the country. In 1829 George Shillibeer took up the idea in London, and although Shillibeer himself found himself fleeing to France to avoid his creditors, the concept was a success and today everyone knows about London’s – and Britain’s - double-decker buses.

The last two centuries have seen ups and downs for Britain’s buses, and you might think they’ve had more downs than ups in recent years. But it can’t be denied that buses have evolved from a one-off business opportunity to something hugely important to millions of people every day. So what is the link, the so-called ‘red thread’ that links 1824 to today?

My view is that the common link is pride and a sense of service. The Mancunians of 1824 were very proud of their new buses, and, notably, best practice today reflects pride by staff and pride by passengers in their local bus operator. And that links to the other arm, a sense of service. People want to feel that their buses are run for the benefit of the passenger, not the bus company (or their owning conglomerate). That’s absolutely not to say that large groups can’t create customer loyalty or pride – it says that it needs culture and imagination.

There’s a bus museum in Manchester, the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester, which works in partnership with local government body TfGM to tell the story of the region’s public transport. After being the cradle of Britain’s buses (and railways, of course) the region became blessed with an unusually varied and rich patchwork of bus history and this is commemorated today with a collection of seventy vintage buses, thousands of documents and photos, hundreds of bus stops and ticket machines and precisely one cast iron bus shelter. It’s well worth a visit to see how far buses have come in two hundred years.

If you go, resist the temptation to say that buses were better in the old days. The staff there (they’re all volunteers) will remind you that their lovely vintage classics lack disabled space, lack heaters, lack step-free access – in fact, they lack pretty much anything beyond seats. But they look rather lovely, and they exude a sense of pride and welcome that’s like gold dust. So don’t let anyone tell you that yesterday has nothing to teach us – a walk around a museum like the one in Manchester is proof that Mr Greenwood and his successors still have much to say to us today.

The Museum of Transport Greater Manchester is open from 10 am to 4.30 pm every Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holiday. Visiting details

Paul Williams - Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester