please empty your brain below

If any of these reductions have been or were to be justified by the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street, that reason has just gone right out the window.

dg writes: They weren't.
I’m going to be unpopular here but many routes are still significantly over bussed carrying little more than fresh air. With bus hopper tickets there is an opportunity to radically improve bus services. Instead of having 3 overlapping routes on a corridor each running every 10 mins but not evenly spaced between them could move to just one running every 5 mins interchanging with other corridors also having 1 bus running at higher frequencies. Would require massively improved interchanges but could lead to better more frequent services overall at same time as reducing costs
I sit here in a large, prosperous town, near a number of decent sized cities, where many of our buses run once an hour until about 5 in the evening and not at all on Sundays. Our most frequent service is, I think, every 12 minutes and we don't have many of those.

You've got a really good case of first world problems there!
Such a shame for RV1. It connects places nothing else does. Not just tourist-friendly, but very useful for those working around the South Bank. A 20-minute frequency however makes it pretty much pointless.
The roadworks don't help.

The 115 had an annual usage of approx 7m in 2014/5, then they did the roadworks in Aldgate, resulting in the route being cut back to Stepney for 4 months at the start of 2016, figures in 2015/6 were 5.9m, in 2016/7 the curtailment to Stepney finished at the end of April, but ridership further reduced to 5.6m. The RV1 had the road closures around London Bridge and on top of that Tower Bridge was closed for refurbishment for a period, so in 2016/7 ridership was nearly 50% lower @ 800,000 compared with 2015/6 (1.59m) - it also operated 70,000 fewer km in 2016/7.
Is the rerouting of the 390 the reason it appears in both of the first two lists (meaning that it has both increased and decreased in frequency)?

dg writes: Fixed, thanks.
Not quite true that all of the cuts have escaped publicity. There has been an ongoing campaign to get the cut to the W12 reversed.

It is, of course, just worth making the point that the Mayor's "policy" (such as it is) on buses is now a lie. There are cuts in Outer London just as much as there are in the central area. The cancellation of Oxford St pedestrianisation drops a "bomb" on TfL's published plan to further cut routes in Zone 1.

I understand the H14 improvement will be reversed when the route receives double deck buses. The 274's cuts (by 1/3) are partly compensated by the introduction of double deckers but wait times will be noticeably longer.

There is a further consultation due on Central London bus routes that will make past proposals seem tame. At that point people *might* start to notice what is going on as long established links are smashed to bits.

The consultation on Crossrail related changes has been closed for a year now with no results published. Only two of the new routes have been awarded to operators leaving barely six months for operators to prepare for all the other changes / new contracts even if all the results emerge today. Normally TfL give operators 8-9 months preparation time. It's all looking like something of a mess.

Finally TfL have yet to publish the route level bus patronage numbers for 2017/18. Wonder if they're worried about the huge falls in usage that the numbers will contain given the total is down 14m on the previous year?
Great analysis DG

The deterioration in the bus service is disappointing and worrying. Yes the government grant to TfL has been cut, but the Mayor's own policies (fares freeze, hopper tickets) have also directly contributed to TfL's income going down, and this is the result.

Weekend night bus cuts where the Night Tube duplicates routes are perhaps understandable, but weekday night bus routes have also been severely cut - e.g. the N5 is now every 30 minutes - and these are important for shift workers.

In general buses have had a hard time in recent years, there's a lack of "bus love" in TfL, with the emphasis on Crossrail, Overground expansion, major roadwork schemes to remove one way systems, Oxford Street pedestrianisation (which has resulted in bus routes being chopped) and the new cycle lanes.

It'll be interesting if this becomes an election issue at the next Mayoral election.

I (for one) am fuming that the bus I regularly take (the 268) will reduce from 12 to 20 minute intervals after 7pm, when it is still well used.
Crayonista - i agree that plenty of the daytime buses i use aren't very busy. but i'm not sure that your proposal is the right solution. if you watch the pain that older people go through getting on and off buses (and the time it takes), i'm not sure making them go through that repeatedly is the answer.

Mikey C - it will be interesting to see whether the Hopper fare increases ridership and reduces revenue. Presumably it's too early to tell.
One thing to be hopeful for is that reducing bus frequencies will alleviate traffic on key routes. Faster journey times could then make up for the less frequent service.

Congestion must be a key factor in falling bus ridership, I know it is for me.

This of course assumes that passengers don't choose to use their cars instead...
To be fair I spent much of my latest stay in London on buses, and I seldom meet a packed bus, and it's during daytime.

The hopper policy does make me take buses instead of the tube though. The in and out of tube stations, and the higher fare of the Tube, both prompt me to turn to the much cheaper buses.
I suspect another costly bus policy is allowing London based users over 60 free travel - maybe if you can prove you are in receipt of a pension at that age you can be granted this but otherwise there is no reason why reaching 60 should trigger free travel.
A severe slowdown on journey times is the main reason I don't use the buses as much as I used to - we seem to have lost a lot of bus priority lanes, so buses now get stuck in congestion with everything else.
The mayor has made a shambles of transport in London. He did not listen to people at TfL, and kept on about selling off property and assets which could were either already accounted for in budgets, or could not be sold off for various reasons. This has made his funding gap bigger. It amazes me that they say ridership is down, when I use them that's certainly not the case, especially at weekends.

dg writes: Ridership is down (4.05m journeys in 2016/7, 4.01m journeys in 2017/8).

The problem is that fewer people pay, what with 1 hour tickets and free children. It will be interesting to see the ridership figures and how they are calculated.
Interesting that you posted this today, the same day that TfL announce a trial of passenger-counting methods with a stated aim of 'better bus planning and forecasting for the future'.
All this blithe talk of the hopper bus is a load of crock.

Sure you can change buses, but even with the most frequent service you still have to get off a bus and often walk to another stop to wait for another bus to catch another route.

Already it can be noted in bus consultations that routes are getting cut and that passengers can chaqnge to other routes to get to a destination! Oh wonderful instead of a direcr route you need to add at least another 15 minutes to your journey to get somewhere!
My local route, the E3, runs 21 hours per day (04.30 to 01.30). I wrote to TfL 2 years ago to query the 10-minute headway after midnight. To my observation those buses are almost entirely empty. Needless to say, the response claimed frequencies were strictly according to usage, but failed to answer my point about the late-night runs. Some bus drivers might appreciate more early nights.
Just for the record, London residents over a certain age get free travel on nearly all public transport. Oldies living elsewhere in England get free travel on buses in London (and the rest of England). (The ages for both used to be 60, but are now somewhat higher and more complex than there is space for in this box).
@David S, yes I agree Sadiq has to take some of the blame for the current situation, as his policies starved TfL of funding at a time when central government subsidy was also being eliminated.

It's ironic that under the son of a bus driver, TfL is making massive cuts to bus services
@Malcolm

The London scheme remains at 60.
When Silvertown opens in mid 2020s there are planed to be quite a few new bus links crossing the river - so there is some planning for expansion still.
A decade ago, when I was younger and stayed out later, the (bendy) N29 would frequently be standing room only all the way from Trafalgar Square to Finsbury Park, and that was with a 3- or 4-minute frequency.

I've not been out on it recently - would be interesting to see how the 10-minute version compares now there's Night Tube.
@ John - yes there are bus service plans that TfL are tied in to providing. AIUI TfL tried to reduce the scale of their commitment part way through the hearings about the Silvertown Tunnel construction. This caused consternation and the Secretary of State (C Grayling) has insisted that the higher level of service be provided. Therefore TfL are lumbered with a higher level of cost in the future than they hoped for. So there's a mini budgetary issue waiting for them in the future - *if* the Silvertown Tunnel is ever built. I have my doubts.
Dangerous territory here for TfL. Yes I understand that the crazy loss of 700m a year government grant means they have to do something.

However in this day and age when we are supposed removing people from cars onto public transport, their policies have been a shambles.

The cycle schemes while necessary could have been orchestrated and strategised in a more bus friendly manner. Londons busiest bus route 25 has been killed by the removal the Stratford High Street to Bow bus lane. Oddles of pavement space could have been used for the cycle lane plus reduction of car space, whilst maintaining the bus lanes.

My fear is that removing so many buses off the roads, by implementing policies that encourage people to potentially take up their own cars/taxis/Uber, means that confidence in the bus next will be lost, and private space in the form of personal vehicles will be even more common. Let’s face it, what would you rather sit in traffic, a bus, or in the personal confines of your own space, sound system, Bluetooth access etc. of your car?!

I think with the implementation of the cycle routes TfL had ideal opportunity to create a prioritised and harmonious bus and cycle scheme, however TfL bowed over the cycle lobbyists and the politicians.

Whilst I encourage the uptake of cycling, cyclists groups need to get real and understand London is +8m people, not Amsterdam of 700,000. Mass transit schemes (I include buses if you can speed up the journey times) are the only way to create transport efficiency in a city of such size, and remove large numbers of car users off the road.

Ultimately my point is, the mixture unfriendly cycle schemes towards buses, the removal of bus priorities, reduction of frequencies, the failure of TfL to get a grip on Uber/taxi/minicab numbers, all serve to increase cars (in cab form too) on Londons roads, no matter more pedal pushers you achieve.

In this day and age of high speed technology and rapid paced social media, in a sleepless city which moves faster culturally, l socially and economically than it ever did before, TfL’s bus policies are way out of keeping with the times. And with all this in mind, no wonder London’s bus users and finding other modes to do their ‘quick’ business.










TridentScan | Privacy Policy