Londoners urged to travel to work in open-top sightseeing bus

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Now, the Londoners are being urged to travel to work in the fresh air aboard an open-top sightseeing bus.  Snap, the bus and coach crowdsourcing platform, is running a free trial service between Walthamstow in northeast London and the centre of the capital, shadowing the Victoria Line – which Transport for London warns is busy for its entire length.

This radical new plan has been drawn up by Snap’s chief executive, Thomas Ableman, in response to the this deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Aboard a sightseeing bus belonging to The Original Tour, he told that one thing they know is that a lot of people are very nervous about using the London Tube. He don’t want people who are nervous about using the Tube to start using cars instead. There are more than 233 open-top buses like this one in London. Let’s put them to work taking commuters to the office. This is literally the ultimate in COVID-secure public transport.

The transport for London’s stated aim in response to coronavirus was to reduce demand for buses and the Tube by over 85 per cent, which appears to have been achieved. The car use in the capital, however, is down by around only 20 per cent.

Apart from the trial service from Walthamstow Central to Victoria there is no set route for the sightseeing buses. Instead, prospective passengers register their journey requirements on a crowd-sourcing platform, getasnap.com. The plan is to establish hubs at each end of a popular journey.

Mr Ableman said that they only need to about 20 people on one single line-of-route to get a pop-up, open-top bus route running, pretty much from anywhere to anywhere if enough of your neighbours want to make similar journey,’ said. “It’s just a function of demand. The fares will depend on how many fellow travellers want to make the same journey.

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