southwest to Harlow in the northeast, halfway between London and Cambridge.
The Green Line was distinctive in a number of ways. It was green, of course, not just on the outside but in the livery and finish inside as well. The buses were typically single-decker, in contrast to the conventional London buses of the day, and they had folding electric doors that closed with a swish. This feature also distinguished them from the open-backed double-deckers of central London and gave the Green Line buses a cozy, reassuring, and rather warm feel. Because they covered such long distances for a regular bus line—the typical Green Line route entailed a trip of over three hours end to end—these buses did not stop at most of the standard bus stops but only at occasional interchange points. Despite going no faster than the average London bus, they were thus nevertheless an “express” route and could charge a little more for their services.
The color and nomenclature of this service was not fortuitous. The Green Line buses invoked and illustrated a long-standing principle of London’s urban planning: their terminuses were strategically located athwart or beyond the “Green Belt” established around London in the early decades of the century. The latter constituted an early exercise in environmental preservation as well as in the provision of open space for public leisure and pleasure. The British capital in those days was thus carefully contained within a belt of open land: variously parks, common land, old-growth forests, undeveloped farmland, or open heath, all of it inherited from earlier royal or municipal or parochial property left in place so as to assure the preservation of the countryside of southeast England, perennially under threat from the unconstrained expansion of the Great Wen.
Despite the helter-skelter ribbon development of the interwar decades, and the even less appealing public and private housing projects of the 1950s, Greater London had been more or less contained within its belt of greenery; sometimes no more than a few miles deep, but enough to distinguish the city from the country and to preserve the identity and particularity of the towns and villages on its farther side. The Green Line buses thus reflected in their name, their routes, and the distances they covered the largely successful aspirations of a generation of planners.
I, of course, knew nothing of this. But I think I instinctively grasped the implicit message of these buses and their route managers. We, they seemed to say, are the moving spirit and incarnation of a certain idea of London. We begin in Windsor, as it might be, or Stevenage, or Gravesend, or East Grinstead, and we finish up in Harlow or Guildford or Watford, straddling London as we go (most Green Line routes passed through Victoria Station, Marble Arch, or both). Whereas the red Routemasters scurry back and forth across central London, their passengers leaping on and off at will, we Greenliners box the city, acknowledging its astonishing scale but asserting, in our distinctive routes and endpoints, its necessary limits.
I sometimes essayed those limits, riding the line from one end to the other just for the sheer pleasure of seeing woods, hills, and fields emerge at each end of my native metropolis. The Green Line “team”—there was a driver and a conductor to every bus—seemed distinctly sympathetic to this ostensibly pointless childhood exercise. They were not paid much more than the drivers and conductors of the red buses—none of the employees of the London Passenger Transport Board could boast much of an income in those days. When I started using their services, the busmen had only just come off a bitter and prolonged strike. But the “mood” of the Green Line men was quite distinct. They had more time to talk to one another and to the passengers. Because their doors closed, the interior was quieter than that of other buses. And large parts of their route
The Green Line was distinctive in a number of ways. It was green, of course, not just on the outside but in the livery and finish inside as well. The buses were typically single-decker, in contrast to the conventional London buses of the day, and they had folding electric doors that closed with a swish. This feature also distinguished them from the open-backed double-deckers of central London and gave the Green Line buses a cozy, reassuring, and rather warm feel. Because they covered such long distances for a regular bus line—the typical Green Line route entailed a trip of over three hours end to end—these buses did not stop at most of the standard bus stops but only at occasional interchange points. Despite going no faster than the average London bus, they were thus nevertheless an “express” route and could charge a little more for their services.
The color and nomenclature of this service was not fortuitous. The Green Line buses invoked and illustrated a long-standing principle of London’s urban planning: their terminuses were strategically located athwart or beyond the “Green Belt” established around London in the early decades of the century. The latter constituted an early exercise in environmental preservation as well as in the provision of open space for public leisure and pleasure. The British capital in those days was thus carefully contained within a belt of open land: variously parks, common land, old-growth forests, undeveloped farmland, or open heath, all of it inherited from earlier royal or municipal or parochial property left in place so as to assure the preservation of the countryside of southeast England, perennially under threat from the unconstrained expansion of the Great Wen.
Despite the helter-skelter ribbon development of the interwar decades, and the even less appealing public and private housing projects of the 1950s, Greater London had been more or less contained within its belt of greenery; sometimes no more than a few miles deep, but enough to distinguish the city from the country and to preserve the identity and particularity of the towns and villages on its farther side. The Green Line buses thus reflected in their name, their routes, and the distances they covered the largely successful aspirations of a generation of planners.
I, of course, knew nothing of this. But I think I instinctively grasped the implicit message of these buses and their route managers. We, they seemed to say, are the moving spirit and incarnation of a certain idea of London. We begin in Windsor, as it might be, or Stevenage, or Gravesend, or East Grinstead, and we finish up in Harlow or Guildford or Watford, straddling London as we go (most Green Line routes passed through Victoria Station, Marble Arch, or both). Whereas the red Routemasters scurry back and forth across central London, their passengers leaping on and off at will, we Greenliners box the city, acknowledging its astonishing scale but asserting, in our distinctive routes and endpoints, its necessary limits.
I sometimes essayed those limits, riding the line from one end to the other just for the sheer pleasure of seeing woods, hills, and fields emerge at each end of my native metropolis. The Green Line “team”—there was a driver and a conductor to every bus—seemed distinctly sympathetic to this ostensibly pointless childhood exercise. They were not paid much more than the drivers and conductors of the red buses—none of the employees of the London Passenger Transport Board could boast much of an income in those days. When I started using their services, the busmen had only just come off a bitter and prolonged strike. But the “mood” of the Green Line men was quite distinct. They had more time to talk to one another and to the passengers. Because their doors closed, the interior was quieter than that of other buses. And large parts of their route
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