please empty your brain below
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I’m sure the accountants are working very hard at cutting back services to the absolute bare minimum, and further than that if they think they might get away with it. It would be interesting to see some post-implementation review as I suspect many of the changes make a bad situation worse. I can’t see how making any service less frequent and less reliable is going to increase passenger numbers.
Perhaps generative AI tools should be given the task of drawing London bus route maps, if TfL is unable to employ real people to do such useful tasks.
Andrew | 20.04.23 - 7:57 a.m. | #
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I think you meant to say that you change at Horseferry Rd for a tweaked route 3 to Victoria, not Waterloo.
dg writes: i did, thanks.
Jeremy | 20.04.23 - 8:25 a.m. | #
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TfL moving from Victoria Street has probably made the case of removing easier too.
David | 20.04.23 - 8:27 a.m. | #
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I can't even begin to imagine the amount of planning and research and experimental laboratory work that would have to take place to figure out your new commute if they'd done this pre-journey planner, pre-citymapper, pre-google maps.
But then I suppose TfL would do a handy little map instead, whereas now they can just tell you to go away and use the apps.
MK | 20.04.23 - 9:18 a.m. | #
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Despite being the much-quoted son of a bus driver, Sadiq Khan has little awareness or interest in the detail of his policies. If he did he wouldn't for example have allowed TfL to block the view from the front of many double-deckers with large stickers saying where the bus goes, above the destination blind that tells you the same thing. Even his Bus Hopper fare isn't much cop, if you remember that no-one pays more than 3 bus fares a day thanks to capping.
Andrew S | 20.04.23 - 10:18 a.m. | #
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The lack of proper mapping now is a disgrace.
TfL haven't cared about buses for years now, so these changes aren't just driven by the post Covid hole in the budget.
Mikey C | 20.04.23 - 10:37 a.m. | #
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"And it is still a crowd because at least 30 of us piled aboard, this because I made the effort to turn up just after eight at the height of the morning peak. Come in the middle of the day and the 507 instead carries mostly air."
So in that case, rather than removing it altogether, why not run it as a rush-hour peak-only service instead?
Cornish Cockney | 20.04.23 - 11:08 a.m. | #
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I guess a problem with running rush-hour peak-only services would be deciding what to do with the buses in the hours in between.
Kev | 20.04.23 - 11:19 a.m. | #
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As part of this, what is happening to the Waterloo bus depot, which was reconstructed at great expense to be all electric for a fleet of around 50 electric intensively used buses mainly servicing the high frequency routes like 507? If the depot is being closed/reverting to a mix of diesel and electric, then that would be a significant capital spend writeoff as well.
MilesT | 20.04.23 - 11:19 a.m. | #
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Another route disrupted by the long term closure/diversion at the Victoria end which started in May 2011, I think it gets withdrawn with the diversion still in place.
Even before the planned rerouting, the C10 covered part of the 507 already and served Victoria, plus its increased in frequency and got larger buses.
The bendy buses with their 150 passenger capacity used to be heaving in the peaks, the passengers disappeared and now so has the route.
Bye bye Red Arrow (as this is the last proper one).
Still Anon | 20.04.23 - 11:48 a.m. | #
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Scrapping the Bendy Buses was one of the most short-sighted ideas going. Those buses just ate passengers up in seconds. Big massive queue at the bus stop all boarded so quickly. Perfect for the 507 and 521 back then. But that's an argument for a long time ago...
So long 507 and 521.
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 20.04.23 - 1:04 p.m. | #
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It's not like TfL haven't already made a map for this for the consultation last July, though some changes have been made.
The 214 will be moving into the RA depot I believe, MilesT.
matthieu1221 | 20.04.23 - 7:01 p.m. | #
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The 1966 reshaping plan envisaged the Red Arrow network commencing in 1967 (500 1966). But the busman's union was having none of it, they had already seen the threat to conductors jobs that OPO operation really was.
LT hung out for over a year for a deal with the union, which only happened at the last minute in September 1968. In the meantime, LT had drawn up plans to introduce D/D crew operated routes to cover the new revised 'Red Arrow' routes, which were numbered in the regular scheme.
The 501 (forerunner of the 521) would have been numbered 26, the 507 would have become the 199. If they had been introduced the routes may have kept the regular numbers and we would be saying goodbye to the 199 instead of 507.
501 -26
502 - 32
503 - 153
504 - 32A
505 - 60
506 - 258
507 - 199
Another tale of what might have beens on London's Buses.
Steve | Homepage | 20.04.23 - 10:01 p.m. | #
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Surprised there is a demand to link Waterloo and Victoria stations by bus. Wouldn’t train travellers just change at Clapham junction ?
Kev | 21.04.23 - 12:22 a.m. | #
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I’ve spent more time on the 507 between Waterloo and the middle of its route than I care to remember, and a little bit of me is sad that, having moved out of London, I won’t be able to take one last ride on it. Looking back, the route played host to an experimental electric bus between the Bendy buses and the current model - it was rather claustrophobic, smelt of plastic throughout, and had all the grace of a milk float, lurching to a stop when pulling up at the curb. It was the future once…
Oh, and sorry to be that pedant, but it is Department *for* Transport, but you are far from alone in harking back to an earlier age.
Anon | 21.04.23 - 3:45 a.m. | #
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I was at Chancery Lane yesterday late afternoon. The 8 service was horrible with multiple turns in service. Shoreditch, to buses back to back heading to Holborn. Large gaps, packed buses both travelling east and west. The 521 was very busy. I can't tell if this was because the 8 was so bad or whether user numbers are not what TfL still believe they are. The 25 really needs to head west again. Either to TCR / Holborn or Waterloo in place of the 521. Its city end is a shadow of its former self. I cannot wait for the current Mayor to go. And I cannot wait for this current government to go either. Between them they have royally screwed London.
Frank | 21.04.23 - 9:36 a.m. | #
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With just over a week to go, ten more maps have appeared, hurrah.
But they're mostly about how to change from one route to another after links are broken (in some cases it's quite a hike).
Only one of the ten new maps actually shows a bus route... appropriately that's the C10 (but I still don't know which stop the C10 will be using at Waterloo).
If anything, adding all the maps and a relentless focus on how to change buses has just made the whole page much harder to unravel.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 21.04.23 - 3:31 p.m. | #
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Kev - the main purpose of the route (and its sister the 521 from Waterloo to London Bridge) was to connect the terminals to areas of central London with poor Tube links.
The 500 (Victoria-Oxford Circus) was eventually replaced by the Victoria Line. The 521 (and its predecessor 501) were supposed to be a stop-gap until the Holborn-Aldwych branch was extended to Waterloo!
timbo | 21.04.23 - 10:09 p.m. | #
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I’d strongly disagree about the benefits of bendy buses, at least on non-5xx routes. My experience of the 29, when it was bendied, was of pickpocketing and theft, barely-suppressed violence (late evenings) at the back of the bus, and an atmosphere where you wouldn’t want to sit too far from the driver (not that they could help in an emergency, locked in their cabin). But civil servants on Red Arrow bendies were better behaved.
Labourer | 22.04.23 - 11:15 a.m. | #
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Rode the 521 this morning - a nostalgic dride tghrough the Strand underpass. Packed full at Waterloo (mid morning). Goodness knows how all those people will manage to fit on the 59 next week (which arrives at Waterloo already full and standing). I suspect most people will find it quicker to walk to Holborn - and that's a lot of add-on travelcard revenue TfL will lose: people will just buy a point to point ticket (season or whatever) to Waterloo.
I tried to consult the spider map displayed by the stop at Waterloo, only to realise that it was dated July 2013.
timbo | 25.04.23 - 5:11 p.m. | #
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