The wonderful world of Harlow Dial-a-Bus
History / Sun 5th Jul 2020 at 05:20pm
IF you have never discovered the wonderful world of Talking Pictures TV that now might be the time!
An archive film & TV channel. It shows classic British film & TV and classic American TV.
You can find it on Sky 328, Freeview 81, Freesat 306 & Youview 81.
Doing the rounds at the moment is a wonderful little gem from 1974 called Dial-a-Bus Harlow.
Basically, it did what it said on the tin. If you lived in Old Harlow, you rang up, booked a bus and it turned up.
Basically, like a communal taxi. It ran between 0700 hrs and 2330 hrs.
Why did it stop? We are told it was just too expensive.
The film from 1974 remains a fascinating insight into a piece of Harlow’s social history.
kthe5
2020-07-05 21:11:02
Amazing what can be found sometimes. https://trl.co.uk/sites/default/files/SR214.pdf Supplementary Report 214C
DagenhamDave
2020-07-07 11:16:04
A nice comment by kthe5, which the link download reported this: "In practice the timekeeping performance has been very good, and in week 20 the proportion of pick-ups made within +5 minutes of estimate was 88 per cent." I wish one could say the same about Arriva.
jason
2021-12-07 19:39:45
Great to see this before i found this site i was watching the harlow documentary.. I looked up to find why it didnt continue and got this page etc..
Rup Boon
2022-03-11 13:06:45
I fancy asian women.
Michael Hopkins
2022-11-23 23:38:29
I bet a lot of people either changed their mind after calling for a bus, or got a lift instead. It was a great idea in theory, but it was never going to work long term. Certainly not back then. Nowadays you could charge the passenger overt the phone, using their debit card, which would give much more incentive to actually be outside waiting.
5 Comments for The wonderful world of Harlow Dial-a-Bus: