In the heart of London of 1963 the city pulsed with the beat of change. The Beatles had stormed the collective imagination and kicked off the Swinging Sixties. And everywhere, from the smoky jazz clubs of Soho to the bustling docks of the Thames, there was a sense of anticipation. London was shedding its post-war gloom, eager to embrace the future.
A recently unearthed cache of documents at London’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has revealed a bold but long-buried secret: in the 1960s, a clandestine program sought to radically reinvent the iconic London double-decker bus. Hidden away in forgotten filing cabinets, the sketches, blueprints, and internal memos paint a picture of an ambitious attempt to break from tradition and usher in a sleek, modernist vision for the city's transport. The designs, never before made public, reflect the era’s appetite for reinvention—embracing streamlined, space-age aesthetics, panoramic windows, and even early concepts of automation.
The rediscovered documents suggest that the project, known internally as “Metropolitan Transit Forward,” was driven by a desire to redefine urban mobility at a time when Britain was reshaping its identity amid postwar recovery and the Swinging Sixties’ cultural revolution. Some sketches show aerodynamic, almost pod-like buses with curved glass exteriors, while others propose modular interiors designed to accommodate evolving commuter needs. The reasons for the project's quiet demise remain unclear—perhaps cost, political shifts, or sheer deference to nostalgia—but its boldness speaks to a time when even the most familiar fixtures of daily life were subject to radical reconsideration. Now, for the first time, the world can glimpse what London’s streets might have looked like had these futuristic visions come to life.
Among the submissions, there were buses with glass-domed roofs for panoramic viewing of the city's historic sites, buses that were gardens on wheels, complete with live plants and flowers, and even bowling alleys and buses that looked more like mobile art galleries, showcasing the works of local artists. Each design, no matter how outlandish, were considered by the Transport Authority
