please empty your brain below
The "penultimate/antepenultimate" question seems answerable. From the winning stop, the /walk/ to the asterisk (where I assume you have to alight) is shorter than the walk from the last stop, midway round the avenue.

Malcolm of Kent | 05.06.24 - 7:13 a.m. | #

I think the entire premise is flawed; as you say, TFL can only count boarders, and just because few people get on somewhere doesn't necessarily make it little used, if a lot of people get off there. I think your theory that it would be on an infrequent route is probably closer to the mark, but even then one could argue that a stop is well used as a proportion of its passenger potential.

Ian | 05.06.24 - 7:25 a.m. | #

Could it be that if the bus loses mobile coverage then any taps in aren’t recorded against a stop?

Southern Heights (Light Railway) | 05.06.24 - 7:35 a.m. | #

Malcolm - The terminus is where the yellow dot is - stop YC, on Beaufort Road, which is "alighting point only". The K5 then runs empty round the corner to the layover on Dukes Avenue (incorrectly shown on the map as an extension of Broughton Avenue) where the asterisk is.
The last stop at which you can board is on Lammas Road, where the arrow is on the map.

It is possible, I suppose, that people board at YB (Lammas Road) and are allowed to stay on the bus, or just walk round the corner, to await the return journey towards Kingston or connect with the 371. There would be little point in doing that at YA.

Perhaps TfL excluded stops which had zero recorded users. An FOI request for the actual numbers at stops YA and YB shed might shed light on the matter.

Timbo | 05.06.24 - 7:50 a.m. | #

I will more or less repeat what I said last time this came up.

I am convinced this has to be Glebe Road in Hooley on route 405 northbound. It comes up as zero in the statistics. I have never known anyone get on or off there other than the one time I used it.

The bus stop itself is hidden in foliage for much of the year, it serves a small area where I cannot imagine people using a bus and the stop is located way back from the busy 40mph road it is on and there is an intervening service road. Other than the few houses, there is no reason to visit there (as far as I can make out when investigating, the footpath leads nowhere).

One the one occasion I used it just because I could, I had to stand in the busy fast road with my arm frantically waving and the bus went past a great speed before the driver must have actually realised there was a bus stop there and came to an abrupt halt about 50 yards down the road.

Pedantic of Purley | 05.06.24 - 7:53 a.m. | #

Does the opening/closing of doors get recorded, I was under the impression it was tied in with the iBus data. If this is the case then identifying 'least used stop' is easy-peasy.

Still Anon | 05.06.24 - 8:27 a.m. | #

"scaled and averaged giving ridiculously accurate numbers to five decimal places"

Oh that's a terrible pet peeve. It's not like pretty much everyone didn't have to learn about significant figures in maths, and there's no excuse for someone who regularly works with statistics to do that. And it's not terribly tricky to find a formula for Excel to massage the data appropriately.

Chz | 05.06.24 - 8:29 a.m. | #

It is possible (though not consistent with the mention of Iver) that only stops within the London boundaries were counted.

Sprout Eater | 05.06.24 - 8:52 a.m. | #

NOTED! 😂😂

Geofftech | 05.06.24 - 9:06 a.m. | #

I am surprised that it is not Graham Hall Coachworks on the 246 by Westerham Heights, which may be the most inaccessible London bus stop on foot. Apart from a couple of houses nearby, I can't see why anyone would want to get on or off here.

B2024 | 05.06.24 - 9:31 a.m. | #

A reminder that, when there are 19,827 bus stops, the argument "I can think of a really likely candidate" is unlikely to land on the actual least used bus stop.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 05.06.24 - 9:35 a.m. | #

I'm surprised to learn that bus stop names aren't unique to avoid confusion when planning a journey (or at least only shared with the stop in the opposite direction). I'd assumed that was why some don't have the obvious name, or the one locals used before names were shown on stops.

Andrew S | 05.06.24 - 10:25 a.m. | #

For a short time in March this year I think that the two South Croydon Station stops in St Peters Road could lay claim to being the least used stops in London. After the 455 was terminated these stops stayed in place for a few weeks until TfL removed them, unserved by buses and completely without passengers.

I am very much looking forward to seeing Geoff M`s video. Don`t forget to take Roger along with you to bail you out when the man behind the curtains calls the police. A camera will almost certainly be too much for him.

keith the Kraut | 05.06.24 - 10:31 a.m. | #

I would question whether the data sets include a) Non-passenger bus stands and b) alighting only stops (the measurement method would exclude the latter). Are there any boarding only stops to consider?

MilesT | 05.06.24 - 11:09 a.m. | #

The lowest non-zero figure for an actual stop (as distinct from a "BP" - hail and ride boarding point) in the earlier FOI request was Forestdale in Arnos Grove, but it seems unlikely as it is served by three ordinary routes, a school route and a night route. There are, however, over a hundred other stops, including Dysart Avenue, which have essentially the same stat (both 0.22 to 2 significant figures, although I'm not sure what that figure represents - people per day?)

Timbo | 05.06.24 - 11:51 a.m. | #

I have a potential future bus stop challenge suggestion (if you haven't already done it): the furthest bus stop from the tube/train station its named after.

I say this after spotting "Shoreditch High Street Station (Stop B)" yesterday which I never in a million years would have thought would be situated there. A solid 8 minute, not fantastically obvious walk away from the train station, and funnily enough with a different name to the stop directly opposite (Curtain Road).

Sean | 05.06.24 - 1:38 p.m. | #

Sean,
Riddlesdown School/Riddlesdown Station on route 412 might be a contender.

Pedantic of Purley | 05.06.24 - 2:56 p.m. | #

I was an inveterate user of the Brixton Station bus stop back in the 1980s so it's good to read of its accolade!

cau1khead | 05.06.24 - 4:44 p.m. | #

This was an interesting read, I've always wondered what the answer could be. I was surprised to see a stop for a station be so little used, but it makes sense considering it's the 969.

All Over 2a | Homepage | 05.06.24 - 5:08 p.m. | #

When Archway was a gyratory, the W5 bus started at bust stop U on the eastern side of the station, but had a stop at bus stop D on the northern side of the station. Except the drivers didn't bother picking up anyone there, they just veered to the right to make the next turn. So W5 had a stop where it never stopped.

Greg S | 06.06.24 - 1:57 a.m. | #

A look in the passenger data spreadsheet for both Lammas Road and Beaufort Road shows counts of 0.00000 (i.e. none) for both of them - less than the 0.22 for Dysart Avenue. So it may be that the TfL 'least used' should be qualified 'that actually is'...

Also worth pointing out is that another FOI to TfL (FOI-0950-2324) gave a list of all bus stops (and a few other things), with names, locations, point letters, etc.

Jeremy GH | 06.06.24 - 10:47 p.m. | #











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