please empty your brain below
Total mileage now 72
Total duration 5h40
Average speed 12.7 mph
Aggregate route number total RR2812
Average route number 256 (307 excluding letter routes)
Boundary crossings: 9 (the 441 loops back into Surrey at Stanwell Moor, re-crossing back into Greater London on the stretch of the A3113 it covers twice.
The Tesco store next to Ashford hospital is on what was hospital ground. The old Ashford hospital was demolished so Tesco could build a store there and Tesco built the present hospital as part of the deal.
Parts of the hospital have recently been sold, demolished and flats are now being built there. The A&E has closed.
On your link to the 441 ticket page, they advertise an "Oyster Match" ticket for £1.40p which is available on the 441, maybe you could have paid £1.40 if you had presented your Oyster Card.
John - the Oyster match is only valid on the 441 between Staines and Stanwell. However, like most buses outside London, although the one-off fare is extortionate the all-day, and longer, tickets are pretty good value.
Also DG wrote about the Heathrow free trains here.
http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2011/12/annual-tube-challenge.html
Anyone who's ever taken a bus from Heathrow should know. iBus announces "End of the Heathrow free flow zone" or something. And the fact that nobody else is paying should wake you up as well...
I cannot imagine who would pay to take the 441 from Ashford to Heathrow normally. Just take the 203 to Hatton Cross and then a free bus.
I suppose most drivers don't know about train fares... but when I was completing my circumnavigation of London by bus, I had to spin some story to the R21 driver about why I didn't just take a train from Uxbridge. Same with the T80 in western Sydney, which is 20c more than the train and twice as slow.
It seems the 441 is a genuine ex-London Country route, albeit truncated somewhat at the western end from its original High Wycombe terminus and extended a little at the eastern end beyond Staines. (given away a little by the route number being much higher than other local non-TfL buses.
1974 photo here
http://www.traditional-travel.co.uk/wpimages/wp21363907_05_06.jpg
I was at Terminal 5 the other day and got there by bus. The freeflow seems reasonably well used by employees travelling between parts of the airport. We also had some flyers travel from T5 to T4 on the 490 and they knew they didn't have to pay as no attempt to tender a fare was made. There is certainly an I-Bus announcement on approach to Hatton Cross to say the zone ends there.
We got caught out by that, travelling from T5 to Hatton X to catch the X26: we'd have missed it at Heathrow 123.
As RoBT says, the fare is only £2.50 from the next, main, stop at Ashford Hopsital, which is much more reasonable. Unfortunately by using the stop you did (which nobody else really ever uses!) you were effectively charged the fare from Staines.
timbo - not sure where you got the idea from that the 441 is given away by its number "being much higher than other local non-TfL buses", it is in fact one of the lower non-TfL route numbers in Staines. In fact, all the non-TfL routes in Staines have higher route numbers than all the TfL routes, bar the 51 (which used to be the 451) and 71 (which used to be the 41/43, effectively the other half of the old 441 to Slough and High Wycombe you mention (renumbered to 71 to fit in with First's branding).
Interestingly, Abellio are intending to pull the 441 out of Stanwell Moor because it's really annoying for through passengers. It's even worse in the opposite direction to DG did it - you have to go from the main roundabout on the Southern Perimeter Road/Airport Way, round into Stanwell Moor following the one way loop as described, before being forced to turn left upon exiting Stanwell Moor, back up to the aforementioned roundabout, go all the way around (usually the lights are all on red), then back down the dual carriageway the way you've just come!
I was looking more at non-TfL routes around Heathrow (most of which have two digit numbers) rather than Staines
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