This picture shows a Transport for London revenue protection operation taking place at the stop by Tesco Express the other day - that's catching fare-dodgers to you and me. I've accompanied such teams going about their business in Ealing. It was an educational experience: those collared ranged from silent teenagers borrowing friends' Zip cards to over-staying foreign migrants. There was a UK Border Agency contingent in the party I was with - an unswiped Oyster card can be the tip of a law-enforcement iceberg.
Bus-related crime and delinquency is an enduring issue, and for legitimate reasons. But fixating on it can make you forget what a vast kind of miracle the capital's bus service is, one that our neighbourhood has particular reason to be thankful for espcially in the historic absence of a nearby Underground station. Clapton Pond is blessed with buses - almost over-blessed, as the morning mini-tailbacks at the stop by the Pond itself attest. The generous local service has a further value too, for passengers who are that way inclined. They tell a neglected tale of the economic life of our city.
The thing about a London bus is that it's a cheap way to get around - not cheap compared with buses in big cities overseas and not as cheap as it used to be, thanks to recent fares hikes. But £1.30 will still get you all the way from here to Victoria if you climb on board a number 38 and care to go there.
It's the form of public transport that Londoners with the least money use most, which is one reason why the bus service tends to gain passengers when economic times are hard. I'd guess that each route from Clapton Pond provides a different sort of insight into that. The one that gives me most food for thought is the number 48, which links Walthamstow and London Bridge, collecting and disgorging Pond-dwellers en route.
It's the one I usually use for travelling to City Hall, if I can face the frequent painful crawl through Bishopsgate (on impatient days I take a 254 to Aldgate and a longer walk). But it's that progress to and then through the Square Mile that speaks so eloquently of the power of the City and the dependence on it of less wealthy parts of London such ours.
Climb aboard a 48 any time before nine in the morning, and it's already pretty full. The earlier it is, the less affluent the passengers look: largely cleaners, builders and entry-level caterers I'd say. We sit together, heavy-eyed, until we've juddered well into Shoreditch when my travelling companions leave a few at a time and evaporate into the hard-hat zones from which piles like the Pinnacle are springing, and that bewildering web of tiny streets where the roots of boom-time predecessors like the Gherkin can be found if you squint hard enough at your A-to-Z.
In core rush hour there seem to be more white-collar women on board, though even my limited receptiveness to female couture signals tells me they aren't Barclays executives. The 48 is a way of conveying the low-paid into the heartland of global wealth. There's something poignant about it, but also something starkly realistic. E5 and E17 beyond need EC1 whether they like it or not, and will do until the capital's capitalism makes a better offer.
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