please empty your brain below

(latest data on bus passenger numbers is here)
So the 113 is outside the longest 20 even though it goes from central London to within walking distance of the green belt?

dg writes: it's under 12 miles.
Fascinating - having lived on the London/Essex border in the 1950s/60s I recall that the well-loved 38 & 38A routes served the easternmost outposts of Chingford (Royal Forest Hotel) and Loughton Station respectively. I don't recall when the route was truncated to just Clapton Pond.
...Summer Sunday extension to Epping Forest withdrawn 1965 Cut back from Chingford to Walthamstow in 1968 and further cut back to Leyton in 1969 and to Clapton in 1990
Notice the deliberate typo at the start? I mention it in the hope that it won't be in a "10 deliberate typos you didn't spot during 2021" post in the new year.
Does one driver do the entirety of the N199, or do they change halfway? That seems like a heck of a journey, especially on a bus full of drunks.
Scott: changeover point is Catford Garage. According to London Buses.
Fascinating. The outer London bus routes may also benefit in speed from the higher speed limits in certain outer London boroughs, which don't have the widespread 20 limit that many inner London boroughs have
daveid76 - the typo was in the original FOI request.
I was quite surprised that the X26 didn't achieve 20+mph and on inspection find that there are just three 66 min journeys in each direction, the last three on Sunday evenings (one is just after midnight).

This gives an average speed of 19.2 mph despite the handful of stops. However, going to Heathrow, the reality can be a lot quicker with lip service paid to the stated departure time at Hatton Cross.
Why, when the data provided by TFL was in meters, have you provided the bus route lengths in miles? Now I don't know how long they are.
How many buses does TfL have?

dg writes: 9068.
The X26 route was even longer and I believe ran from Dartford via Croydon to Heathrow, truncated back in the 00's.

Only ever used it once and you don't know how close I got to missing the flight! That was a dash. Never again, trains after that.

Was never a bus fan - that is until I got my Freedom Pass! Now a short hop user.
Before it was cut back to Croydon the X26 was so unreliable we always took the 285 instead (never the 111 though, London's 4th longest bus route which takes a long Z-shaped course through everywhere in West Middlesex beginning with H (the Hamptons (Wick, Court, village), Hanworth, Hounslow, Heston, Harlington and of course Heathrow) and takes nearly two hours).
Thanks to Timbo for his answer to Rob's questions re the 38 bus. I was also trying to remember when the cuts to the route were made. It had been my bus from Chingford to school in Walthamstow, to central London, then to the Victoria Line once that opened.

I still live in Chingford, so the entries re the 313 and 379 were useful. Thanks DG.

A final comment for Rob: a 397 bus runs from where the Crooked Billet pub used to be, through some Chingford side roads, and out through edges of Epping Forest to Loughton and Debden.
I was a bit surprised by the relative shortness of even the longest routes then realised that there are probably far longer regular services run into and out of London by non TfL affiliated bus companies.
Pedant corner, but TfL is an organisation, so attracts the singular 'TfL is', not 'TfL are'.

dg writes: My apologies that this has probably made 15 years of previous posts entirely unreadable.
The X26 may have few stops, but there are often passengers with luggage, passengers wishing fond farewells as they embark, passengers with little English conversing with the driver, passengers attempting to pay with cash ... It's a bit chancy taking it to Heathrow, but I sometimes take it the other way.
Excellent work all round. Please can someone set a cron job to make this FoI request once every six months, so we can get a (hopefully consistent) data series over time?
TfL don't have 9068 buses - at best they could be said to have 1000 of those new bus things but they don't actually operate any buses (i don't know if they even still have an operators licence)
TFL receive 3,000 FOI requests a year, which is presumably not a negligible cost to process and respond to.
Alas we can only presume the cost is non-negligible, unless someone submits an FoI to determine the truth.
Regrettably, a dozen paragraphs of further bus content tomorrow.
Haha, "Regrettably" - DG, you are a such a wag!
DG - Now that you mention it!
I never rode it myself but there used to be a night bus at the weekend from Central London to Gillingham for a few years in the mid/ late 90s (N81). That route must have been nearly 40 miles long.










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