It might seem a peculiarly metropolitan whinge to be flagged up on the front page of a national newspaper. But in devoting his Telegraph column to plans to replace the bendy bus, would-be mayor Boris Johnson is hitting on an issue that not only resounds practically with many Londoners but raises genuine questions about Ken Livingstone's record.
The problems of the dread bendy bus itself have been well rehearsed before in London, the subject of a long campaign in the anti-Livingstone Evening Standard and trotted out again by Johnson. The buses are generally agreed to be uncomfortable to travel in, ugly, susceptible to fare dodging, ill suited to the capital's narrow or windy streets and dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians. All compounded by comparison to the bus they replaced: the nippy, jump on-and-off Routemaster, complete with conductor. Even the genuine improvement of disabled access is too often shown to be a theoretical boon, as drivers fail to spot wheelchair users or allow them on board.
These problems might be dismissed as just a change for the worse, a technological development that - like ringtones for some, or SUVs or windfarms for others - have altered landscapes and made people's daily lives slightly more unpleasant.
But on another level, it diminishes Livingstone's standing as a politician. In a phrase Johnson gleefully recounts, Ken famously said "only a dehumanised moron" would scrap the Routemaster. His early campaigns, presenting himself to voters as not just another out-of-touch party apparatchik, saw him taking to such open-topped buses around London. Saying he understood the affection for a bus that ordinary people took day by day wasn't regarded by many as an idle, irrelevant remark: saving the Routemaster was an election pledge. He promised and delivered consultation - but inexplicably ignored the opinions he canvassed on this.
It's a strange achilles heel for Livingstone, because transport is an issue that he can justly claim as a massive success. After his election, London had the peculiar experience of seeing a politician actually make a tangible change: the congestion charge, bus and cycle lanes, more frequent services and quicker payment systems genuinely made public transport better and more affordable. Livingstone's credit column on buses should far outweigh his bendy debit.
But the bendy bus encapsulates many criticisms levelled at the mayor by his enemies: that he is indifferent to the uglification of the city, that he is no listening democrat, that he is - despite the image on which he swept into office - just another politician. Squeezed up against fare dodgers in a cramped number 12, stuck in a jam of its own making, you remember the pledge casually swept aside and it's all too easy to feel disillusioned again.
