Buses are back in fashion. Our new prime minister, for one, is a big fan. Having made his name overhauling Greater Manchester’s bus network, Andy Burnham is now doing the same across England – capping fares, lifting restrictions on free travel for disabled people, and backing Richard Parker, mayor of the West Midlands, to bring the region’s buses under public control. We’ve been pioneering these kinds of policies in the capital for years with great success, so it’s brilliant to see them being rolled out across the country.

As the son of a bus driver, I know firsthand why buses matter so much. As a kid, my brothers and I spent many a weekend on the top deck of my dad’s bus, watching the streets of south and central London go by – and occasionally peering down the periscope to spot him in the driver’s cab below.

Many of the passengers would never have met elsewhere in their day-to-day lives but, for a brief moment on the bus, their worlds would collideMany of the passengers would never have met elsewhere in their day-to-day lives but, for a brief moment on the bus, their worlds would collide

On the number 44, we met passengers from every walk of life: rich and poor, white, black and brown. There were teenagers on their way to Sunday morning football, families on a day out and elderly people heading out to do their shopping. Many of the passengers would never have met elsewhere in their day-to-day lives but, for a brief moment on the bus, their worlds would collide.

Back then, buses were for everyone. But somewhere in the decades since that basic promise was broken. In London we’ve spent the last 10 years trying to bring it back. As mayor I’ve frozen fares seven times and introduced the “hopper” fare – meaning that, for 60 minutes, Londoners can travel on as many buses as they like for only £1.75. Three years ago we also launched the Superloop – a game-changing new express bus network for outer London that has made it quicker and easier to get around the capital. And the success of our efforts to build Europe’s largest fleet of zero-emissions buses, and make all our buses Ulez compliant, means that the days of dirty polluting engines are over.

Today London’s iconic red buses are better than ever – and the prime minister’s plans promise to give communities across England a chance to replicate our success. It’s a genuinely exciting prospect. Buses are one of the most affordable, accessible and sociable ways of getting from A to B. They’re there for all of us – and, for that reason alone, they’ll always be my favourite.

Sound carries on buses, I find. A good thing, of course. As a person who thrives on scraps of other people’s conversation – a curious person, some might say nosy – these turbid upper decks are places rich in poetry and treats. An entire adolescent education was gleaned by listening to the Year 9s at the back of the 13 bus. This is where, facing forward yet listening backwards, I learned the truth about French kissing, period stains, whether it was possible to get pregnant from a toilet seat, and how to eat crisps while wearing lip gloss. To this day, the smell of cheese and onion retains its erotic charge. I’ve heard a married couple break up on the 205 through Whitechapel, teenagers lie very well to their parents and whole encyclopedias of disinformation disseminated between boys on the 25. My favourite bus eavesdrop, though, was by my friend Lucy, who, on a bus in Wales, overheard one older lady tell a friend her son had just bought a computer. “What’s a computer?” the friend asked, to which she replied: “It’s like a telly with a calculator plugged in.”

Since 2018, 90 London doubledeckers have cruised down a dedicated busway on Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City’s equivalent to the Champs-Élysées. Assembled in Falkirk and sent to Mexico via Southampton, they plugged a gap in the city’s metro system, which has not grown fast enough to meet the needs of 23 million people. I love how whimsically out of place those cherry-red chariots are in the highland jungle. Linéa 7 coils around no fewer than 10 roundabouts (or glorietas as they’re known in Spanish) adorned with some of the city’s grandest monuments. At just 25p, it is a truly, well, glorious ride. When I spent a spring in CDMX five years ago, I would wake up early on Sundays to snag a top deck seat for the half-hour trip to La Lagunilla, a sprawling antiques market with a block party atmosphere. But the ride home, packed in with shoppers clutching their wares and tipsy from micheladas, was the real fiesta.

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In spring 2010, my wife, Claire, and I were coming to the end of our holiday in Istanbul when Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted, creating an enormous ash cloud that halted air travel over Europe. So, a bus to Germany. The next morning, we rolled out of Turkey and, settling into the worn 1980s upholstery, watched Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary roll by. We befriended an extended Bradford family returning from hajj, carting with them various infants and two jerry cans of holy water. They remained resolutely cheery despite being questioned at almost every passport stop. At one point outside Vienna, bleary-eyed, we realised we had just passed the same monument twice: a voluble row among the (GPS-less) drivers confirmed they were pretty much lost. But we made it to Cologne, where the railways took over. Our backs ached and we were in sore need of a shower. But in the air we would have blinked and missed it – and now we could say we had truly crossed a continent.

Obviously, the Queen of Buses is the 555 from Windermere Station to Grasmere village green. Take my hand; here’s how it works. Hop off the train, travel-stale, bewildered. Stagger into the magnificent Booths supermarket next door. Emerge, having lost it in Local Produce, with a Westmorland Pork Swirl; ask a waiting octogenarian walker (wooden stave, kerchiefed terrier, full-body backpack) for directions to the bus stop. Walk 2.6 metres; wait, max, eight minutes. Pay your cheery driver (this is the north) £3. Place your inappropriate suitcase on the purpose-built inappropriate-suitcase shelf. Sit back. Within moments, you can breathe. It’s a journey like no other: silvery lake-water, spectacular mountainage, deep romantic chasms, drystone walls enclosing sunny spots of greenery, couples in moisture-wicking quick-release hiking shorts and azure microfleece neck-warmers. Come for Coleridge, Grasmere gingerbread, the Keswick Pencil Factory; stay for the triple-five, as we regulars call it, and scenery so beautiful you want to laugh.

The term “liminal space” is truly overused these days. Few public spaces are actually liminal, but among these is the National Express coach from London to Glastonbury. From the moment you pull away from the 02 car park in Greenwich – no normal public transport journey starts at the 02 car park – you know you have left behind your old life, ready to enter a new phase of identity upon arrival at your destination in six to eight hours, Stonehenge traffic dependent. Or at least until Tuesday. There’s an air of expectation, a febrile excitement, a lot of cans and an excellent service station stop-off where you can – and should – purchase a foot-long Subway for the next leg of the journey. This country would be a better place, I think, if more bus journeys had a stop-off point at which you could buy a foot-long sandwich. You will never see these fellow passengers again, but for now they are your friends. The journey back home on the same coach, conversely, is hell on earth.

An ear operation means I am unable to travel by Tube. No earphones either. So it’s the bus and people-watching for me. Luckily, I’m a regular on the top deck of the greatest, most historic, bus in London, the No 24. I caught it with my dad and I’ve caught it with my children.

Green 24s started running – before even I needed them – in 1910 from Hampstead to Victoria. Two years later, the route was extended to Pimlico, and 21 years after that the buses turned red. Not that you’d have known that from the 24’s appearance in the 1949 black-and-white film Passport to Pimlico. I come to work from Pimlico but the 24 is really for everyone. What other bus could offer you close-up views of Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Parliament Square, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, the Cenotaph, 10 Downing Street, Horse Guards Parade and Trafalgar Square, all in 15 minutes or so? That may just be the best tourist ride in the world.

In 1999, I was 25 and backpacking through south-east Asia when I found myself on a 15-hour bus journey from Vientiane, Laos, heading south towards the Mekong Delta — the only way to reach the Four Thousand Islands in those days. It was the sort of journey you can only contemplate when you are young.

The bus was packed with locals. Live chickens clucked in the luggage racks above our heads; plastic stools filled the aisles, their passengers riding them effortlessly as they slid around whenever we hit a bend in the road.

I found myself sitting beside an extraordinarily beautiful Laotian man who looked about my age. He spoke no English; I spoke no Lao. Through gestures and smiles, we seemed to understand each other. I was enormously flattered when, at a roadside stop, he offered me a stick of what appeared to be barbecued cockroaches, which I regretfully declined.

As I sat bumping in the seat beside him, I found myself imagining a sliding door into another life: getting off at his village, staying with him and spending the rest of my life working on a farm.

Instead, when his stop came, we shook hands. And as the bus pulled away, I watched him disappear through the window.