Photograph details

© Transport for London
Collection of London Transport Museum
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Passengers boarding a DMS-type bus. Passengers on the left are paying by self-service and entering via the automatic turnstile, while a passenger on the right is paying the driver.

Photographed by Colin Tait, 30 Nov 1970

Image no: 13067-1

Inventory no: 1998/44748

20th Century London caption: From the 1950s, London Transport (L.T.) had plans to make the bus service more efficient. The Reshaping Plan was introduced in 1966. It proposed the introduction of flat fares and One Person Operation (O.P.O.) vehicles. O.P.O. was favoured by L.T. as it would halve staff numbers but removing the need for conductors on buses, and so save money. Various methods of fare collection were experimented with. This picture from 1970 shows passengers using a coin-operated turnstile on the left of the bus. On the right, a woman is paying her fare to the driver. Turnstiles were popular for their speed but not convenient for people with pushchairs or heavy or bulky shopping. They included a buzzer which sounded when a child fare was deposited, which alerted the driver to check that the passenger was a child.

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