please empty your brain below
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Odd that north London routes should feature so heavily as busiest routes considering the lack of alternative transport methods in south London.
When does a route 25 become a night service and vice verca?
scrumpy | 19.09.18 - 7:05 a.m. | #
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Interesting that at least two of the 10 most crowded routes had frequency reductions last year. So much for "better matching demand".
Scrumpy - the 25 becomes an "N25" on paper between around 0030 and 0500.
Leo | 19.09.18 - 7:45 a.m. | #
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I recall when route 109 ran from Purley to the Embankment rather than Croydon to Brixton. Things change!
100andthirty | 19.09.18 - 7:50 a.m. | #
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Long live anorak corner!
Jon Jones | 19.09.18 - 8:01 a.m. | #
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The 10 least busiest night buses are the weekend only ones. Dividing passengers by km gives a different perspective for night routes: -
Every night: 365 (0.50), 33 (0.58), 119 (0.64), 213 (0.64), C2 (0.69), 381 (0.79), 271 (1.44)
Weekends nights only: H37 (0.50), 307 (0.62), 132 (0.69), 145 (0.71), 296 (0.76), 154 (0.82), 486 (0.91), 319 (1.02), H32 (1.03), E1 (1.3), 158 (1.71)
This is just a sample.
Still Anon | 19.09.18 - 8:12 a.m. | #
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Why are some routes numbers and others a letter and number?
dg writes: Because.
Chris | 19.09.18 - 8:39 a.m. | #
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I am missing a trick here DG. Table 1 presumably measures passengers getting on the bus. Table 3 ('Most travelled') presumably measures 'passenger km' or does it measure the total distance covered in the year by all the buses from departure to destination ie the route distance covered by the buses not by the passengers.
dg writes: the latter.
J. | 19.09.18 - 8:48 a.m. | #
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I’m not sure it’s entirely true to say that South London doesn’t get much of a look in. To take a route I know well, much of the traffic on the 36 (no.9 in the list and growing) is from Peckham and Camberwell - either getting off to take the tube at Oval or Vauxhall or going on to Victoria. To me, the bus seems much more crowded on the southern part of its route than the northern. And this is despite at least some of its traffic being taken by the partially parallel 436 and 185. I suspect there are other examples.
Baldassaro | 19.09.18 - 8:51 a.m. | #
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Interesting nota bene.
Was TfL's methodology flawed in the past or are there higher incidences of paper tickets / fare dodging now?
Anon | 19.09.18 - 9:27 a.m. | #
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Makes the proposed changes to the 25 even more suspect doesnt it!
Drew | Homepage | 19.09.18 - 9:48 a.m. | #
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According to the second table, the R10 clockwise is less popular than the R5 anticlockwise.
dg writes: Fixed, thanks.
Why is TfL cutting some of the busiest routes (both in terms of passengers and passenger miles)? Particularly if both statistics are in the way up? As others have said, how does that match demand?
Andrew | 19.09.18 - 9:55 a.m. | #
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The EL3 is not really new. It's a re-numbering of the 387 into the EL series with only a slight change in the route.
dg writes: Yes, I know.
JohnC | 19.09.18 - 10:31 a.m. | #
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Some of these routes are 'BorisBuses' (NBfL, LT, 'New Routemaster') which have fare evasion needing to be seen to believe. No cliché fare avoiders - all ages, genders, races doing it because they know they won't be caught.
My estimates from regular use of routes 8, 38, 48, 55, 253, 254 are of at least a dozen every trip I'm on (not end-to-end), crudely rounding up to at least 1000 per route per day. Passenger under-count and loss of revenue from stored value ticketing.
No-one at TfL will even address this, so what's the methodology for passenger counts and how is it validated?
Joel | 19.09.18 - 10:52 a.m. | #
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Re Andrew: One constructive rationale I could come up with (among of a sea of negative thoughts) is that TfL might want to drive passengers to routes running the same corridor but less busy. Maybe some routes are too frequently seen that the waiting passengers fail to realize alternatives are available.
Patrickov | 19.09.18 - 12:51 p.m. | #
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@Chris (Why are some routes numbers and others a letter and number?) - stems from the Bus Reshaping Plan of 1966. Some routes introduced as a result of this still exist today : W3, W7 are examples.
Paul | 19.09.18 - 2:35 p.m. | #
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I, too, have a big spreadsheet with all the bus usage data on it. There are some very peculiar things going on with this new methodology. Given TfL's own description of what they are aiming to achieve with it the results are odd.
Route 423 is the more bizarre change. This routes serves Heathrow from Hounslow. It has a longish section in the Heathrow free travel zone but is well used by people who work at the airport. TfL's new methodology has chopped 50% of the patronage off the route. If you look back over the route's history and that of its predecessor, the H23, the route has consistently carried well over 1m pass jnys a year from 2 decades. There is nothing at all locally that could explain such an enormous drop in patronage levels. The airport is still open, people still live in Beavers Farm estate, the bus route and timeable has changed in nearly a decade. How TfL can justify such a misleading statistic is beyond me give the new methodology is supposed to *better* account for those who may not touch in on a bus but who still use the service anyway.
Like DG I was also surprised at the 25 remaining top of the "chart" plus the 86 and 205 all putting on patronage.
PC | 19.09.18 - 3:15 p.m. | #
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Joel... I'm not sure how you can recognise fare avoiders on the Boris Buses. I pretty much always use the rear door (on principle, because it's there) but never touch in with my Staff Pass as there's no point. I would hope the analysis takes the far higher non-tap rate into account.
Andrew S | 19.09.18 - 8:11 p.m. | #
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"By this measure the most crowded bus is the W7 which, along with the 41, delivers residents of Muswell Hill and Crouch End to their nearest tube stations."
An interesting observation. If the Alexandra Palace Branch Line was incorporated into the Northern Line as planned this wouldn't have been the case.
BRIAN BERKE | Homepage | 19.09.18 - 8:28 p.m. | #
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@andrew S
There is a point - if no-one taps in, they shouldn't be surprised if the service is taken off because no one appears to be using it.
Monkeybricks | 19.09.18 - 8:40 p.m. | #
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I watch the non-swipers/tappers to do those counts since I became aware of the evaders. Andrew, you're still a passenger, using the service to go from A to B just like me - the numbers all add up. I'm not a driver so depend on public transport for mobility. If 'every journey matters' then 'every passenger counts' too. Please swipe in future.
Joel | 19.09.18 - 9:03 p.m. | #
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At the risk of going off on a tangent, whilst I have an Oyster card, I don't always use it when catching a London bus. As I live mostly in Sussex I often use a paper travelcard so may appear to be traveling fraudulently (and uncounted). Whilst the level of paper travelcards will of course vary from one route to another TfL must surely be aware of the approximate levels of such uncounted journeys.
Lorenzo | 19.09.18 - 10:54 p.m. | #
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There is something odd about the R5 having more journeys made on it than the R10,when they are the same route,and are on the same tender contract.R5 does tyhe anti-clockwise loop from Orpington via Halsted & Knockholt,the R10 does the clockwise route via Knockholt & Halsted.
dg writes: The R5 makes seven journeys a day, and the R10 only six.
The 15H aside,the 467 is the least busiest double deck route.
dg writes: Excellent, thanks. I wonder what the bottom 10 is. I'd also love to know the busiest single decker routes
Kevin Lucioni. | 20.09.18 - 11:18 a.m. | #
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Busiest single decker route is the 72 (5.36M passengers, 151st overall)
This is followed by the 235, W15, 170, C10, 195, C11, 276, 316 and 214
Ignoring night routes, the quietest double decker routes are 467, X68, 317, 498, 129, 412, 492, 215, 406 and 418
dg writes: That's brilliant, thanks! And duly added.
greatkingrat | 21.09.18 - 1:10 a.m. | #
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So of course the 276 being in the top 10 busiest single deckers is why TfL have just cut the frequency on it, right?
Not surprised to see the 72 on the list though - that runs past my office and I often use it to get to the shops - even at off-peak times of the day it's often full and standing. Does it go under low bridges or something that means it can't be double decked?
Moogal | 21.09.18 - 3:09 p.m. | #
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That random 140 route to Heathrow is getting higher and higher every year. Hopefully the X140 comes sooner rather than later, even if it does mean cutting back to Hayes.
The 36 is getting busier and busier since the 436 was removed.
I know this means nothing, but route 20 seems to have a really glorious number despite the locations it serves, plus its usage and function. Like the number 5 to Romford at least gets usage, but this route is the complete opposite. Strange.
Most of the increased and decreased usage routes have been changed somewhat. The only concerning route there is the 9.
Gregory | 21.09.18 - 8:03 p.m. | #
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DG can u include the most busiest single door, single deck routes in next year's anorak corner please?
| 30.12.18 - 4:53 p.m. | #
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