Why Are London Buses Red And Has This Always Been The Case?

Ask anyone who does not live in London to name the first images that come into their head when they think of the capital, and you will be amazed at how often the bright red London bus comes up.

Right up to the present day with the Son Of Routemaster, buses throughout the city are painted in the same bright red, easy to pick out during even particularly busy and congested days.

Whilst there are excellent buses and coaches available to hire in other colours that travel to and from the city, it is impossible to deny that the red bus is a common sight, but whilst it seems like the red London double-decker bus has always been around, is this really the case?

When did London’s buses turn red and why did it happen?

A Coach Of Many Colours

The first bus service in London was in 1829, and when it turned out to be a success, a lot of companies followed suit very quickly. Within three years, there were more than 400 bus companies and this quickly created issues and outright conflict over routes.

To get around this problem and safeguard the fledgeling industry, operators agreed to share names, have route-specific liveries and be clear about districts served and fare-sharing agreements.

This led to a conglomerate known as the London General Omnibus Company, although most Londoners at the time simply called it “The General”, who controlled 600 of the 810 buses in London by 1856.

Despite this, for the most part, the route-specific liveries were used until the start of the 20th century, when the companies that were still around started using more distinct liveries of distinct colours.

However, The General was as likely to be painted green or yellow or the colours of the many sponsors painted on its advertising hoardings. The lettering of “General” was consistent and often enough to set them apart.

The red colour originated with the London Motor Omnibus Company, who as part of their “Vanguard” rebrand painted their vehicles red with white banners and hoardings.

Using consistent colour schemes helped to make bus companies stand out from each other and, perhaps more importantly, from the pirate buses that attempted to scam money out of riders by hiding their extortionate fares on the bus itself.

By 1908, Vanguard had been bought by General, who took not only an effective monopoly in London but also the red colour of the Vanguard buses, a colour scheme that has been identified with them ever since.

They painted the buses bright red and replaced the somewhat cumbersome side hoardings with route numbers on the front, so people could easily pick out which bus they needed to take.

The red colour was retained by General from then, through a merger with the London Underground Group, creating a powerful transport alliance that created an effective single operator until the 1920s, as well as creating the roundel logo now synonymous with Transport For London.

After the end of the First World War, many Londoners who had become Engineers whilst conscripted and learned to operate heavy machinery started to run their own bus companies, meaning that the red buses were no longer alone.

Instead, there were a lot of alternative independent bus services, all of which had different liveries and levels of service, and existed primarily thanks to limited oversight and regulation.

This led to market saturation, a network-wide strike and chaos throughout the network with hundreds of different route numbers across the capital.

In the end, this led to a 1924 Act of Parliament that highly regulated buses at a level that had not happened before and paved the way for a unified transport authority, which eventually came into existence in 1933 as the London Passenger Transport Board.

The LPTB, often shortened to London Transport, took over the LGOC, the rest of the Underground Group, and the vast majority of public transport in the City of London.

Whilst London Transport had plans to bring in its own brand identity and logo, the proposals were abandoned extremely quickly in favour of adopting the Underground Group’s iconography and LGOC’s red colour scheme.

The red colour most easily stood out, was consistent and from a brand standpoint was seen as a symbol of strength, with red being part of the Cross of St George.

In an era of London where smog was a major problem, the bright red bus standing out was a necessity for both useability and safety.

At this point, however, it has become such an institution that even after London’s buses were privatised, the red colour was kept.