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Scotland’s best urban transport operator?
A Century of Edinburgh’s Trams and Buses celebrates a hundred years of service by Scotland’s capital city’s publicly-owned transport operators – Edinburgh Corporation, Lothian Region Transport and Lothian Buses. Highly-respected transport author Gavin Booth shares his knowledge and enthusiasm for his native city and its main transport operator in this well-written and beautifully-illustrated volume covering topics ranging from the ‘Pilrig Muddle’ of the 1920s to hybrid and electric buses and a new tramway in the 21st century.
The story starts in 1919 when Edinburgh Corporation took over and quickly modernised the city’s tramway services, and then explores the evolution from Edinburgh Corporation Transport to today’s Lothian Buses.
Over the period of 100 years the city has changed and traffic congestion has worsened but this book tells how Lothian Buses and its predecessors worked to ensure that the citizens of Edinburgh enjoyed a public transport service which was the envy of cities elsewhere in Britain.
A changing fleet
Edinburgh’s bus fleet changed over the years as these two sample spreads show, from a mixed fleet in the 1950s, to a predominantly Leyland fleet in the 1980s. To reduce wage costs and address difficulties with staff recruitment, buses from the late 1960s were designed for one-person operation.
Tram supremacy
Double-deck trams provided the backbone of the city’s services until the late 1940s. The book explains the complex history of Edinburgh’s trams – including their 21st century renaissance – and examines the challenges in switching from cable to electric operation in the 1920s and in replacing trams with buses in the 1950s.
A bright new look
A spirit of innovation runs through the book – including streamlined trams, lightweight buses, city tours, coaching holidays and small buses. From the start of the 21st century Lothian was buying low-entry buses to improve accessibility for passengers with impaired mobility and was experimenting with new services and new vehicle types.
Logging the fleet
During the 100 years covered by the book Edinburgh Corporation and its successors operated over 3,800 buses and coaches, ranging from those with solid tyres and petrol engines in the 1920s to air-suspended electric and hybrid buses in the 2010s. For those who want the detail, every bus is listed in seven pages of tables at the end of the book