please empty your brain below

The bus stop in Hounslow needs its route numbers changing.
The 635 should come off as it now terminates at Hounslow garage, the 110 should go on as it has been extended to West Middlesex Hospital.
Plans are afoot to strip Walthamstow of its twelfth-place crown. Stop AP is where all of the bus routes entering the bus station from Hoe Street drop passengers (but don't pick up) for Walthamstow Central station.

The junction at Hoe Street is currently being rebuilt to convert a gyratory into a public square and new junction. When finished, the plan is that all buses that don't terminate at the Bus Station will skip the station entirely, saving the buses a pointless and lengthy loop.

Even worse for stop AP, after losing most of its buses there's a possibility that it may cease to exist altogether, with a cycle lane built at that spot instead....
Surely the Bus Stop outside 'The Mall' in Romford should appear on the list.

dg writes: There are two bus stops outside The Mall, one served by 10 routes and the other by 9.
The busiest, as opposed to bussiest, will depend on frequency as well, so stops with a lot of night buses or school services, or suburban routes running only twice an hour, will go lower down the list.

As I noted on Sunday (apologies DG for stealing your thunder) according to TfL's ibus data Waterloo stop N was expecting 30 buses to call in the next 30 minutes at 9am on a quiet Sunday morning. At the time of writing that number is about 55 (difficult to count precisely, as it keeps changing faster than I can count them)
Interesting/ odd that of the two westbound stops on the Strand one says towards Oxford Circus Green Park or Westminster, whilst the other says towards Parliament Square or Piccadilly.
You know what, I've been wondering much the same for a long time now. Although daytime buses probably take more significance for obvious reasons, so in that regard, Waterloo Bridge it is then. Thanks very much for this DG.
Meanwhile can I nominate Blackwall Tunnel/East India Dock Road Stop M for London's bleakest bus stop?

It's in a concrete cutting on the tunnel approach below the adjacent streets, and only accessible via a staircase down from the A13.

dg writes: No - as of 1st October when route 108 was diverted, this stop is no longer served by buses.
DG have you ever done a feature on London's closest bus stops? I can nominate two in Raynes Park. The bus driver barely has time to change gear!
I've often wondered, can members of the general public use the school journeys "600s" buses?
They are usually pretty empty and follow pretty much the same route as some of the most crowded buses in my area!
@Cornish cockney

yes, you can
Contender for bleakest bus stop still in use is Dagenham Dock for the EL2. There is also the 123 stop in Woodford. Finally the stop for the 34/444 at Angel Road.

Actually many of the stops on the North Circular are contenders, not helped by the kind of people you might end up at the stop with!

As for bleakest stop no longer in use, there is the former 286 stop in Rochester Way.
Bromley Civic Centre is also served by Arriva Southern Counties route 402 to/from Tunbridge Wells, an increasingly rare example of a non-TfL cross-boundary route (and it does appear on the flag).
It would be interesting to know what the upper limit is for the number of buses using each bus stop. Surely at some point buses would have a queue up to stop at it?
The photo of the Hounslow stop shows its status in the week between the curtailment of the 110 from West Mid. Hospital to Hounslow Garage on 28 May this year and the curtailment of the 635 from Brentford to Hounslow on after 3 June.
Both routes still set down here so the total of routes at the stop is unchanged, and the 110 still goes to West Mid.Hospital but now from Twickenham at the other end of the route.

I think this change to the 110, still terminating at the same place but by approaching from the other end of the route may be unique.
There's no definitive upper limit for the number of bus routes at a bus stop. TfL's Accessible Bus Stop Design Guidance says the following:

It is recommended that where locations are served by more than 25-30 buses per hour, bus stops should be split, where sufficient space is available. This enables buses on different routes to serve separate stops, thus reducing bus-on-bus delay and traffic congestion.

However, bus routes with common destinations should share the same stop, and this may result in it being preferable to have more than 25bph on a stop, even where space exists to introduce a split stop.

Consideration should also be given that a stop that has more routes with a lower frequency is likely to have more times with multiple buses at the stop than a stop with fewer routes at a higher frequency.

@ Kentish Man

Unless things have recently changed, the 402 route has the rare distinction of its existence being totally absent from its terminus at Bromley North station. It's a secret service, not even appearing on the Countdown screen.
Actually, I've just realised, Orpington High Street does have the most daytime buses (school buses don't count). As has been mentioned, in much the same way Bromley has the non-TFL 402, Orpington has the 477 to Bluewater.
You've got the N38 going to Bromley there - should be the N3. (Had to look it up, honest.)

dg writes: Bloody autocorrect. Fixed, thanks.
Actually, the point about Romford's buses is a good one. By themselves, the two stops don't make the list, but as two stops serving the same place they'd be ahead of each individual stop. If the criteria is extended to that level, what difference does it make?

dg writes: A huge difference. But difficulties in defining "the same place" mean there isn't an objective answer.
The 110 going to Hounslow garage from West Middlesex hospital causes some passenger confusion.
I was at the hospital this week and waiting for a bus. A 110 came along with Hounslow on the front, a few people, including me boarded, fortunately the driver said this bus goes the long way round through Twickenham, so we all got off again!
@timbo
The driver of the 629 in Enfield did not allow me to board citing that as I wasn't part of the school I wasn't allowed...
The N26 should appear on bus stops U and J on the Strand - the fact that the route terminates just down the road is neither here nor there; quite a few of the routes that do appear on the bus stop terminate at Trafalgar Square anyway. I think it's just an oversight that the N26 is missing. That said, I was once on an N26 where the driver refused to stop at these stops on the grounds that the route wasn't listed on the bus stop flag!

@the orange one - bus drivers should always allow "normal" passengers on school buses, but in practice many don't. I've travelled on a few of them without any issue, usually when they're nearing the end of their afternoon trips and are nearly empty. I wouldn't want to even try travelling on a bus packed full of schoolkids though.
If you do the shortest distance between stops then Catford Bus Garage stop and the next one are around 100 metres from each other possibly less
What are the tubiest stations?

Mine's the one with the red Oyster in the pocket...
@timbo
Thanks :)

@the orange one
Oh! :(
One of the reasons the Strand westbound is busy with buses is because taxis queue in the bus lane waiting for a spot on the rank (outside Sainsbury's / McDonald's). Buses then have to pull out of the bus lane to pass the taxis and then pull back into the bus stop outside of Charing Cross station.
DG, you've done some amazing research here. But I think you've slipped up on stop M by the Blackwall tunnel. That's the southbound stop and the 108 does still serve that stop.

dg writes; Ah yes, thanks, it's the other bus that doesn't stop there, the one that never did.
Note to self: Research your comments as carefully as your posts.

Is Orpington stop R the stop with the most consecutively numbered buses?
@DG - I must have imagined boarding the 108 at Stop M when it was -3 the other night :) I was very pleased when it arrived.
Anybody know why the Hounslow stop appears to have a kind of roof over it??
@GrumpyOldFart - I think it's a solar panel which charges up a battery and (dimly) lights the flag at night. Some of them also have a button you can press to backlight the timetable at night.

I notice that some of the stops have 'BUS STOP' on the roundel and others have it on the red stripe below? Presumably the style guide changed - but which is the current version?
If you want the shoetest distance between bus stops, It'll probably be Catford bus garage (Stop BN) to Bellingham Road (Stop BQ) (233 ft; 71 meters). Serverd both by 54,208,136, 320, N136 and N199










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