As far as I can remember London’s buses have never before been brought to a complete halt, except by strike action. Not even in 1962/3 when Parliament Square & most of the rest of London were covered in ice for over a week
The nearest I can remember to serious weather-related disruption was in (I think) 1976/77, when many buses broke down & had to be taken off the road. Popular rumour had it that someone had forgotten to put antifreeze in the radiators.
That again was a sharp spell of real cold, & because of the lack of buses I usually took the Tube to Notting Hill & walked down the hill to home - an unnerving experience. The council had done no gritting, so the pavements were unsafe to walk on, & even the surface of the road was getting icy by the evening
But even if the pavements had been cleared, it was advisable not to walk along them for this was the winter after the long hot summer drought, which had dried & shrunk the London clay on which the houses were built. The frost revealed the first signs of the extent of the damage caused by subsidence, as it worked its way through the cracks in the stucco which proceeded to fall off in chunks on the heads of the unwary
It has just occurred to me that I have not heard anybody mention antifreeze for years. Do cars not have radiators any more?
I have not seen any definitive explanation of why no buses were running on Monday, just one suggestion that it was an excessive health'n'safety response to reports that some drivers had experienced skidding - I wonder if they just mean sliding?
To be fair though, few of us have experience of regularly driving in slippery conditions these days.
It reminds me of a winter spent in Canada. Although it was (only just) mid-October, I was taken aback by the extremely bitter cold which met us as we got off the plane. At first I put this down to slow adjustment from the tropical temperatures we had left behind less than 24 hours before, but everybody assured us that it was unusual
Sure enough by Friday the snow had fallen. That evening our host drove us out to dinner. As he negotiated the second corner, with a beautifully controlled slide, it took one glance for me & my husband to reach unspoken agreement: No way were we going ahead with our plan to hire a car for the duration. Neither of us had any experience of driving in these conditions, & we certainly had no wish for a crash course in how to do it
