The original note, as written at the time
THE LEGACY EXPRESS. A transport vessel made to provide travelling comfort for the users. The vessel will be free to board and patronage shall be awarded in advance. This arrangement shall be aimed at providing an example to be aimed at as the bare minimum we should aim for as a society. Other arrangements in the same spirit can be Legacy accommodation, Legacy Parks, Legacy Schools etc.
Ongoing development
A transport vessel built for travelling comfort, free to board, with patronage awarded in advance — offered as an example of the bare minimum a society should aim for. And the same spirit applied to Legacy accommodation, Legacy parks, Legacy schools.
The idea underneath the name is the important one: not charity, but a standard. A legacy service is a demonstration of the floor, built in public, so that the argument about what is acceptable stops being abstract.
A free bus that is genuinely comfortable does something that a subsidised bus does not. It establishes that comfort is not a luxury tier. Everyone who rides it learns what the minimum feels like, and that knowledge is what makes a meaner service politically visible.
The advance patronage is the mechanism that makes it fundable. Money committed before the service exists turns a permanent subsidy into a series of underwritten experiments, and it lets a benefactor buy a standard rather than a gesture.
The risk is that it becomes a showcase and nothing else — one beautiful bus, well photographed, with the rest of the fleet unchanged. A legacy service only teaches if it is ordinary: a route people actually take, at hours people actually travel, repeatedly, for years.
The naming is also doing work and should be handled carefully. Called a flagship it is a monument; called a legacy it is an instruction to whoever comes next.
Set the floor in public. That is the whole method.