Privatisation and deregulation have not served any part of the industry well.
Nick Ridley's rose-tinted view of the golden glowing future with cheaper fares, better services and reduced costs to the 'public purse' has, at last, been recognised as a failure all round.
It has also produced a cartography cataclysm!
Post 1986, bus maps were of three main types.
Many counties went to FWT for their geographically accurate line maps.
Sometimes, as above, they had a different colour for more frequent services. In the late 1990s even South Yorkshire succumbed.
Later the PTE went full colour and so much better.
Less satisfactory, but in the same genre, was a bus map for the whole of Wales.
Too much information!
Type Two (as for London bus maps of old) had thicker lines of one colour with road names on the thick coloured roads with route numbers alongside.
This is City Bus, the privatised name for the former municipal network in Southampton.
This was fine whilst the operator was almost totally dominant.
One or two brave operators began to take advantage of cheaper full colour printing as here in the privatised Portsmouth.
fbb had almost forgotten Blue Admiral and Red Admiral and the ludicrous craze of loss-making minibuses!
But what use was a single operator map of Portsmouth, for example, when several of the city's routes were operated by Southdown, then Stagecoach?
The rural maps provided by County Councils often did not include the urban areas!
Over the years, cash strapped councils have given up on bus maps, in sone cases given up in funding tendered services! For a brief period Northamptonshire (fbb's place of origin) produced some of the best maps ...
... for all the main towns separately and for the whole county.
Now the county produces nothing.
The PTE areas have all maintained route maps but have battled with the pace of change. Some of the designs were less than satisfactory as here with Manchester.
Manchester now provides one colour line maps, whereas neighbouring Merseyside has gone full colour BUT with much reduced detail.
Companies in the PTE areas soon realised they could save money by leaving it all to the Executive. Privatised Mainline in Sheffield went multicolour for a while ...
... but then Stagecoach bought out Yorkshire Traction and thus Yorkshire Terrier and Mainline (having become First Bus) then left it all to the PTE.
In Glasgow, Kelvin Central produced their own map which completely ignored areas served by the Corporation.
So here us a good map of a part of the bus service to East Kilbride.
Tough luck for the rest if the town which us shown as having no buses at all.
At this point, fbb should apologise for the poor reproduction of some of these extracts from Mr Davies book. Admittedly some of the books reproduction is not ideal; both mostly it is down to fbb's 'devices" which in various ways were being difficult.
The camera in the tablet (usually the best) doesn't like the colour red and the old clockwork mobile phone is low on memory and sometimes fails to perform adequately.
To continue, some areas have maintained a solid consistency, Here is West Midlands PTE ...
... with a full set or area maps.
But surely the provision of good maps has declined dramatically. While operators and H M Government are sinking buckets of money into very expensive electric buses, nobody seems to want to tell anyone where the buses go,
Where one operator is dominant you can still get a useful map as here in Cambridge City.
But the cartographic creatures are much harder to find
The book reflects this.
Some counties maintained an on-line network map, but the chances of picking a paper copy up at a Tourist Office, Library or Council enquiry desk are about equal to nil.
Devon's good quality map is available on-line but hopelessly inconvenient and frustratingly scroll-tastic to use when travelling by bus!
Some snippets before fbb concludes this series of reviews.
Who remembers First Potteries fruit salad of routes ...
... designed by Ray Stenning but never fully implemented.
And what about Bristol, branded as City Line??
There were lots of stop names, but a visitor had no clue as to where they actually were with reference to any version of reality.
Similarly the greater Bristol area did things oddly.
Does this have any advantages over a geographically accurate map?
Answers on a postcard to the usual address, please.
Two more very good things about the book.
It recommends a visit to the Timetable World Web site where many of the pictured maps can be viewed full size.
Also there is a good index which has already helped fbb find things he had seen on a flick-through and subsequently lost.
And the old bloke had only just noticed that hus National Express map features in ghostly format on the back cover.
No 3 son will be thrilled.
The book is worth it for that treat alone? Maybe not; but the volume of information, nostalgia and coffee break discussion starter material is enormous.
If you have any interest in the bus industry and it's weird and wacky history, this us the volume for you.
Unfortunately the full title, "The Rise and Demise of the Bus Map", is very true but a sad reflection on the industry's customer care and desire to encourage more customers.
The provision of maps continues to decline, or, as the title says, face an ignominious demise.
The book is widely available on-line
so buy it! You will not be disappointed. Well, you might be if you crave lots of bus pictures - there are only a few of them!
And the team is working on Volume 2 - bus timetables.
Next "Switzerland" blog : Friday 20th Feb
The route of the track is still there ...
... running from top left diagonally to the coast.
Back to the future!
But read the words carefully and push the headline into the long grass.
There are already trains from Paddington to Paignton as per the 0702 above. The implications of the map (above) is that the EXTRA trains will run via Bath and Temple Meads, not via Westbury, as now.
First problem; the company was Meccano Ltd. Hornby and Hornby Dublo were brands made and sold by Meccano Ltd.
Or do you think it is Hornby "tat" as headlined above.
