With all that has been going on in the world, it may have actually escaped your attention that TfL are now consulting on a new round of bus cuts in central London. This is nothing new – or unexpected. What may be surprising is the scale of the changes involved for this further round of cuts. I look at the background behind these and, possibly controversially, argue that these are no bad thing.
Much has recently been written about the forthcoming savage bus cuts in central London that take place in addition to recent cuts already implemented. At London Reconnections we normally try and be objective and not give a personal opinion but, on this occasion, we are breaking our normal guidelines and provide an alternative viewpoint editorial on this controversial issue. Please note that these opinions are not necessarily endorsed by the rest of the London Reconnections team. For a couple of other well-argued opinion pieces giving a different perspective on this issue, see IanVisits’ and former TfL Managing Director Surface Transport Leon Daniels’ takes.
Bus growth and decline
The history of buses in central London in the 21st Century is one of growth and then decline. The period of growth was in response to demand and the current period of decline is at least in part due to the current lack of demand. What has changed things for the future has been the aftermath of Covid and both the reduced level of demand and the uncertainty of how this will change in the future.
Ken Livingstone, former leader of the now-abolished GLC, came to power as the first ever London Mayor in 2000 as an independent candidate. He wanted to be the Labour candidate but the then prime minister, Tony Blair, was determined that this would not happen as he considered Livingstone both an electoral liability and a mayoral liability should he be elected.
Livingstone, determined to be the first London Mayor, stood as an independent candidate. In part due to the Labour choice of a competent but lack-lustre candidate without the charisma necessary for such a post, Livingstone was duly elected.
The problem Livingstone had
From the outset Livingstone knew that he had a major problem if he wanted to stay in office for a second term. Having learnt their mistake in the candidate chosen, Labour would not give an independent Ken Livingstone such an easy run at the next election. It was possible that he could be re-admitted into the Labour party but that was highly unlikely unless he could actually show that he could make a positive difference to the lives of Londoners in the four years until the next election. He could try a second term as an independent candidate but that encountered the same problem. The electorate might take a chance on him as first London Mayor but for a second term he was going to need a good track record.
By far the biggest London issue at the time that was within the powers the Mayor had was transport. He needed to make dramatic improvement in London’s deteriorating public transport system – and fast. The one big advantage Livingstone had was that, in his former role as leader of the GLC many years previously, he knew his way around public transport in London, both literally and figuratively, and had a good idea of what was, and what was not, possible.
Improving the bus service would not be Ken Livingstone’s ideal choice for improving public transport but something needed to be done and it needed to be done quickly. Various factors meant that bus service improvements were the inevitable target. One of these was talk of a future congestion charge and the fear of the accusation that it would be wrong to introduce this when there was no viable alternative. Another was the need to do things quickly and that there was really no other solution.
Undoubtedly, Livingstone would have liked Underground improvements but even station improvements take years and are not guaranteed to happen. Proposals at the time for a vastly improved and badly needed expansion of Camden Town station (‘doing nothing is not an option’) have still not been fulfilled despite the continuing political will and money being available in the early years of the proposal.
Increasing frequency (and hence much needed capacity) on an Underground line generally involves both a signalling upgrade with a long gestation time and a small order of new bespoke rolling stock which can both have a lead time measured in years and be prohibitively expensive.
If the time constraint making quick Underground improvements wasn’t bad enough, a further problem is that the way to get the best ‘bang for your buck’ is to go for big improvements with what the economists call ‘agglomeration benefits’. The trouble is that these are inevitably very expensive as well as taking a long time to implement. As it turned out, Livingstone’s hands would be further tied within a year of his appointment as his new Transport Commissioner, Bob Kiley from the USA, was quick to argue when appointed that the Sub-Surface Railway (Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines) that comprised of 35-40% of the Underground network needed a near homogenous rolling stock upgrade.
With National Rail, it wasn’t much better albeit for different reasons. The Mayor had the power to inject money into services to make improvements such as an increase in frequency. But this had to be done through negotiation with Train Operating Companies and didn’t provide the desired level of ability to oversee operations. Probably, more to the point, the improved services wouldn’t be identified by the average voter as something consequent on Mayoral policy. It would be different if branded as a TfL service.
It was improve the buses – or nothing
There was really nothing for it but to improve the bus services. The good news for the Mayor is that buses are rapidly scalable. With modern jacks suitable for buses and bus washers readily available for purchase it didn’t take much to convert a readily available industrial unit into a bus garage. New buses were relatively easy to purchase and people ready and willing to be trained as bus drivers were available on the labour market provided the wages were sufficient to attract them.
The downside of this bus expansion, as Ken Livingstone knew full well, was that the level of subsidy needed was really not sustainable. But, with a Mr Micawber attitude, Ken Livingstone was convinced that ‘something will turn up’. This could be a disproportionate increase in ridership (which to some extent happened) or something else. It appeared to be a big risk but one Livingstone was prepared to take because he didn’t really have any alternative.
In all probability, Livingstone was not relying on luck but had a medium-term strategy. Whilst, despite what some motorists may claim, the primary aim of the subsequently-introduced Congestion Charge was to reduce congestion, a very beneficial side-effect of it was that it produced substantial revenue for the Mayor which, by law, had to be spent on improving public transport. The Congestion Charge, introduced in February 2003, was initially very successful but divisive. Over time it became less successful at reducing traffic levels, but consequently more successful at raising revenue.
Indeed, the former Commissioner for Transport, Sir Peter Hendy, has very openly talked about how, whatever the intention, the real long-term benefit of the congestion charge was providing the revenue stream to enable the improved bus service to continue.
The loss of operating subsidy
The good times were rolling and this was substantially helped by a £700m per annum operational grant from central government for the Mayor to spend, on his choosing on buses, trams, Underground, and/or road and pedestrian improvements.
It was therefore quite a dramatic shock when the subsequent Mayor, one Boris Johnson, agreed with the Chancellor, one George Osborne, that, on the basis that TfL was projected to be profitable on a day-to-day basis, London should forego this operational subsidy which was dramatically cut to zero over a short period of time. This fitted in well with the Conservative belief, strongly held by George Osborne, that capital investment was good for the country but day-to-day subsidy was a bad thing. It could also be argued that a Mayoral policy of maintaining a high prudent reserve (something Boris Johnson is keen to emphasise was the case on his watch) led a perception in the shires of TfL buses (and trains) being overfunded by the government compared to the subsidies offered rural services.
It should be noted that the capital expenditure revenue on transport from the government was unaffected so big construction projects should not have been impacted by the operational subsidy elimination. However, it should also be noted, as TfL board members were quick to point out, that, with the operational subsidy cut to zero, London received nothing from the road fund licence revenue (unlike other highway authorities) yet was expected to maintain roads managed by TfL in London. Effectively, it was argued, the tube passenger is subsidizing the motorist.
Even the revised arrangement, unsatisfactory as it was in many respects, could have been manageable. Despite what Prime Minister Boris Johnson may claim, the Mayor was managing TfL finances reasonably well and there was still a prudent reserve in case of unforeseen problems.
Unexpected problems
And then came the realization there would be a massive overspend on Crossrail and no revenue for months – possibly stretching to a year or two. And then came Covid.
Once Covid took hold, the situation changed dramatically. Grant Shapps, new in his job as Transport Minister, found himself spending his time trying to get people not to use transport – especially public transport – to reduce the spread of infection. At the same time transport operators were required to continue to run services for essential workers. Clearly all transport providers found next-to-no revenue combined with unchanged operating costs completely unsustainable. And so, the provider of last resort (the government) had to step in and bankroll practically all transport. This even extended to ferries at one point to avoid companies collapsing.
Whilst Covid had largely gone away from affecting our lives, although is now starting to make a comeback in terms of numbers of people catching it, numbers on public transport have not returned to pre-Covid numbers. The government is still providing an enormous subsidy to transport operators around the country, but naturally it wants some say in how the money is spent and wants to avoid waste. It was inevitable that the government would look at bus usage in London (central London in particular where demand is not holding up) and demand cutbacks. Of course, the government doesn’t actually tell the Mayor how to implement the cutbacks, just that he must get closer to balancing the books and impressions of a spendthrift policy leaves the government convinced that more must be done.
The situation we are in today is that the government wants a 4% cut in the bus service in London. This is, of course, on top of any cuts already made by TfL and the Mayor. And if there is a reluctance to cut services in the suburbs then the cuts in the central area need to be more brutal to compensate. The government also want the cuts to be made quickly now it is clear that usage is not going to return to pre-pandemic levels for a long time – if ever.
Where to cut services?
TfL and the Mayor’s attitude is that, if bus cuts have to be made, they should be made (at least initially) in central London. The initial reason for this is that services in central London can be ‘thinned out’ without passengers having no service at all. In contrast, bus services in the suburbs are tending to hold onto their ridership much better and some services, although very lightly used, fulfil a major social need and to withdraw them would mean that some communities would have no locally-available service at all.
It has to be said that the changes proposed by TfL are very drastic indeed. Long established, but largely duplicated, routes are withdrawn in their entirely, and other routes have major changes to cater for the withdrawn routes. One feels that TfL could have just reduced the level of service (further), but they decided this was the time when only major reorganization would be sufficient to offer something approaching a decent service.
It is unfortunate, but perhaps inevitable, that bus cuts in central London are seen solely in terms of a battle between the Mayor of London and the Transport Secretary. One question that doesn’t seem to get asked is why central London, today, should have such a high level of bus service? One could change this to a hypothetical question. If Ken Livingstone were in charge today, would he want to spend the money he had allocated to transport on a high-frequency bus or would he have chosen something else?
Another way of looking at things is to consider the highway space available in central London and decide how best use could be made of it. Would running a frequent service of lightly-loaded buses really be the best option? Although those in favour of public transport would generally argue for a good bus service, most of the rational members of that group would admit that buses are not a panacea. The majority still emit diesel fumes, they contribute to traffic which makes walking less pleasant and they don’t mix well with either pro-cycling policies or plans to increase pedestrianized area. And let’s not forget that a frequent bus service often leads to buses getting in the way of other buses – bus-on-bus delays.
What would Ken Livingstone have done?
Let us imagine what a wily Ken Livingstone might well have said and done if he were in charge today. To get some idea of this we have to see what has changed since 2000. One enormous change is we have Crossrail. Arguably, Ken Livingstone would have said that this is what he would have wanted to do if it were simply a case of waving a magic wand and choosing an option.
Often forgotten is how Thameslink in many ways complements Crossrail by running on a north-south environment rather than an east-west one. Sadly, for various reasons not limited to Covid and its after-effects, Thameslink probably won’t achieve 24tph, unlike Crossrail. However, let’s not forget some of the Thameslink trains are longer than those running on Crossrail infrastructure and have a similar capacity whilst offering more seats.
Whilst Crossrail and Thameslink won’t benefit everyone, it is surprising how much of central London is accessible by use of these two lines and being prepared to walk a reasonable distance. Of course, how pleasant the walk to the final destination is becomes a major factor in making this decision which in turn is dependent on how we allocate our highway space.
Another issue Ken Livingstone had was the Underground in 2000 was basically running to capacity so was unable to handle the expected growth. This is not the situation today. Covid has led to spare capacity and the Elizabeth line has relieved various other lines (the Central line in particular). As we have been at pains to point out on many occasions, cutting the level of Tube services saves very little money as the bulk of the cost is supporting the infrastructure which has to be paid for regardless of how frequently the trains run.
Make the most of the Underground
Indeed, it would make far more financial sense to encourage people to use the Underground where the additional cost of an extra journey is marginal and must be a matter of a few pence, whereas increasing bus services do not tend to lead to significant savings of scale – it can even be the opposite. And just as we emphasized that drivers can be quickly recruited and you can more-or-less have ‘pop up’ garages in buildings on industrial estates, you can quickly make savings by scaling down the infrastructure and selling off the buses or at least not ordering new ones. Of course, TfL does not buy buses – the contracted operator does – but the contract price will reflect the cost of these buses and the risk of the contractor getting stuck with the ‘asset’.
In contrast to buses, once you have bought an Underground train there is not much you can do with it other than run it along the track or leave it sitting in the sidings. In general, you can’t even transfer it to a different Tube line these days. If you sell it then you will probably only get the scrap value. You are even limited to how much you can reduce your staff at stations because of legal requirements at each below-surface station to have a minimum level of staffing.
Pedestrianise
Another favourite policy of Ken Livingstone was to pedestrianise, or part-pedestrianise, notable squares and tourist hotspots. One of his earliest policies (after banning pigeons from Trafalgar Square) was to arrange to pedestrianise the north side of Trafalgar Square. This was very successful and his next major traffic junction for this treatment was Parliament Square. This did not happen during his term as Mayor. His successor, Boris Johnson, vetoed the idea on the rather dubious grounds that, when combined with Crossrail construction traffic, it would have a severe adverse effect on traffic flow. One has to remember that one of the mantras of the first term of office of Boris Johnson as Mayor was ‘keep traffic moving’. This was clearly believed to be a popular policy that would have the support of Conservative voters in the suburbs, but it was also applied to central London to capitalise on, amongst other things, a resentment amongst some motorists of priority measures for buses.
A further question could be, if we weren’t constrained by the need to provide a through bus service, what further opportunities are there for making walking more pleasant? To some extent this is not an either-or question. Bus passengers are inevitably also pedestrians and pre-Covid it was quite clear that if bus speeds went below a certain level bus passengers chose another means to make their journey and that was often walking. Of course, what you don’t want is for the bus service to be reduced and the extra capacity made being filled up with unnecessary traffic of no benefit whatsoever to local travellers. So proper planning is key. You don’t really want to cut bus services without considering the full consequences and, where necessary, mitigating against them.
Where’s the strategy?
What seems to be lacking in post-Covid planning is a cohesive agreed strategy about what the transport objective is in central London. Instead, the government seems to focus on cutting costs and the Mayor seems to concentrate on resisting those cuts. Yet Covid has really provided an opportunity to forget existing policies and rethink what we should be achieving. If that includes a frequent bus service then fair enough, but lets not demand that (and complain about it when it isn’t there) just because it was what was there before.
What also seems to be lacking is an appreciation by the majority of the population of any sense of the need to make savings where possible even if unpalatable. It is said that a commander on the battlefield always wants more resources than it has. That is no doubt also true for the NHS, the police, care homes, environmental agencies, teachers, and, of course, public transport operators. The weakness of case of public transport operators is that, unlike other services, pressure on their infrastructure and workforce is going down not up and so an obvious target for savings to be made to reflect this.
How does it all look?
A further consideration is how this looks to the government and the rest of the country. As the Americans would say, one has to ‘think of the optics’ i.e. how it looks like to others.
On the National Rail network in London there has been a big reduction in the number of trains arriving in central London in the peak. There have also been reductions in services due to Covid that have not been reinstated. In contrast to the Tube, these do make a lot of sense. If the passenger numbers aren’t there, there is no point in struggling to run a needlessly frequent service with all the delays that entail when you can run a slightly reduced service reliably.
Savings on National Rail can be made with rolling stock by having existing stock manage the current level of service and postponing or cancelling plans for new stock. Unlike on the Tube, you can easily shorten trains and move rolling stock around for optimum efficiency. Major capacity improvement schemes can be delayed or cancelled.
The effect of this is noticeable in the south of London where the Tube is largely absent. For example, South Eastern Metro generally currently operates a half-hourly cycle in the peaks (same as the off-peak) instead of 20 minute in the morning peaks and a 22 minute one in the less-intensive but longer evening peak. Cannon Street which had around 23 arrivals in the peak hour now has 17. Furthermore, those 17 trains are probably now shorter than they would have been pre-Covid.
The situation described is similar on other rail lines. What would be difficult for a lay person to understand is why, if train services are reduced into London, and there is more space on the Underground, do we have the same level of service of buses?
The current day situation
We are seeing Crossrail finally getting to the point where services on the Elizabeth line are now operating in central London. We are also seeing cutbacks to HS2 in the north of the country, as well as there being multiple exceptional demands on the Government and householders’ budgets. It looks bad to have many buses running nearly empty in central London when there are alternatives available and so much demand on the limited pot of public money available for spending.
Either one of two things will happen. Demand for buses in Central London may not increase, in which case services are going to be cut eventually. Alternatively, numbers can go up again. Tourists may return, office occupation levels may be restored to their former level. We may even have Hammersmith Bridge being available for buses to transverse it before the decade is out. In this case we can increase bus service levels fairly easily in response to these factors just like Ken Livingstone did at the start of the 21st century.
The TfL consultation on the specific route proposals are here, with the closing date for submitting feedback being Sunday 7 August 2022.
“Ken Livingstone, … first ever London Mayor in 200 as an independent candidate”
I don’t think anyone would accuse Ken Livingstone of being young, but I also don’t think he’s that old!
Two typos I’ve picked up (sorry) Ken become London’s Mayor in 2000 not 200 and it’s Cannon Street not Cannot Street
As for the article – cutting buses in central London is the only sane option given the requirements and the availability of other options in central London (although it’s worth emphasising how much more a zone 1 train ticket is compared to be a bus ticket),
“Of course Roman bus technology was in its relative infancy when Ken was elected as governor of Londinium in AD200”
Both typos now corrected. The second was undoubtedly a bit of ‘auto-correction’ that slipped through.
Surprised you haven’t mentioned the (excellent) growth in cycling in London – and the consequences for buses in London. There isn’t road space in many places for bus priority, traffic lanes, segregated cycle lanes AND quality public realm.
The numbers of people who would get the bus for a short cross London trip – but now will grab a bike (or even e-scooter!) for that journey. I wonder if anyone has considered that as London’s streets become less polluted, walking short journeys is more pleasurable than the 2000s, let alone the 80s!
I’m glad to see there’s a slight push to make buses more ‘comfortable’ in London (similar to those elsewhere in UK) with chargers, skylights, AC etc.
@PoP
Thanks.
I feel it hard to comment about buses in Zone 1 as I can’t recall the last time I took one. I have memories from the 1980s of using my Travelcard to hope on-and-off buses along Oxford Street to fit a record-shop trip into my lunch hour, or trips for computer hardware along TCR, but I long-since discovered that WALKING was the quickest way to get from a tube stop to somewhere.
I suspect the a lot of people use Google Maps (or other apps) to plan their trips and are shown the fastest way to most places in Central London is train/tube plus a short walk rather than an unreliable (in terms of arrival time and trip time) buses.
Even TfL have provided a useful “Walking times between stations on the same line” PDF for people to download and keep.
Living in East Village, E20 most of the buses here are so infrequent as to be unless or go on such roundabout routes (whoever picked the 339 route must be on acid!) that you might as well take an Uber if you want to actually get to any of the place it goes in a reasonable time.
For people with employment time is money and just because the fare is only £1.65, the poor speed and reliability doesn’t make it a worthwhile open even for those on the minim £9.50/hour. The reliable tube and Overground are a much better bet in terms for value for money.
So the buses are left for those who are suck using them: the Over 60s, the disabled and unemployed: which means people who don’t really come unto Zone 1.
Also, I personally don’t buy the argument that because a route has been in operation for 100 year it mustn’t be changed.
James Scantlebury,
I rather thought I had mentioned cycling and making best use of road space (last paragraph of ‘Where to cut services?’). But, yes, I had rather left the user to fill in the gaps. But you emphasise what is entirely my point. There is not enough space and something has to give. And I am suggesting that, in contrast to previous policy, TfL and the Mayor accept that buses have to give up some of their frequency, space used and even priority if there is a better cause.
I do sometimes wonder if various departments in TfL are individually pushing forward their own policies without total regard for other issues. There doesn’t seem to be a definitive priority list – rather a hope that they can somehow accommodate with the highway space available all that they want to achieve even though various objectives impinge to disadvantage other objectives.
The issue this article neglects regarding the proposals is that they extend out o at least zones 2 and 3, and some of the proposals aren’t just going to reduce capacity on routes with an oversupply of it, they are also going to reduce capacity on routes with an undersupply of it and break links without replacement. The justification for cuts as whole may be there, but the justification for the specific cuts being proposed is, in at least some cases, not there. Although there may be an element of proposing draconian changes that definitely will not be supported in order to achieve lesser ones that will be supported as less bad in that context but would be opposed with the same ferocity as the originals if proposed directly.
The truth is buses in central London were already becoming lightly loaded on at least some routes even before Covid. I used to travel by bus from near Finsbury Park to Holborn in the latter part of last decade. The busiest stretch was up to Angel, after which it wasn’t even 1/3 full until I got off . True, it was busier during the evenings but I still got a seat, unlike locally where standing was the norm during both peaks (not least due to school kids and parents).
TfL have gotten a lot of flak for these proposals, but if they can broadly provide the same service in most of inner and outer London by cutting the flabby supply in the centre I think that is the right approach where than more even cuts across the whole network
This has most likely been asked before but… how much does it save running a 8 car train (Thameslink for example) compared to a 12 car? I will make the assumption that less power will be required to propel a shorter and therefore lighter train but, what is this as a percentage of overall cost (100% being the cost of running in full length formation).
Really great, considered analysis that should be read alongside some of the more critical (and, at times, just a little bit reactionary) analysis elsewhere. Sets out the blunt reality of the here-and-now quite clearly.
It would be interesting to assess the fare level on buses in London – well below the going rate nationally for a single fare, especially with Hopper fares – and whether a slightly higher, more commercially driven fare would change the equation for buses to stand on their own two feet financially
@Jason Thompson
This was looked at in one of those RDG/Network rail sponsored “hackathon” events some years ago, which used data that a diesel train was generating about fuel usage over time. I can’t find the link but the route tested was London to Birmingham suing the Chiltern trains route.
As I recall, the prime factor for fuel usage is how much the train has to go uphill and how much it coasts downhill, the actual length of the train isn’t so much of a factor as as diesel train has to both carry the fuel and engine. As I recall the drivers were then encouraged to not get to speeds where they then had to use the breaks afterwards to keep the overall usage down, just like in a car! https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/apr/25/not-so-fast-why-going-slower-can-save-you-a-packet-on-petrol
The Thameslink trains have regenerative braking, so little energy is lost by breaking, as it is reused when starting up again. Moving from a standstill is the point of all trains use the most energy as they have to overcome friction and the torque (of an electric motor). Another factor is the loading of the train: X passengers weight the same no matter how they are arranged in the carriages.
I understand that some UK trains were fitted with electricity usage monitors, so each trainset could be charged with an “actual usage” but the ToC concerned only found that it increased their charges from the electricity generating company. So, rather than work out how to use less power they just revered to paying “the old way”.
Another factor is the engineering time to split a Thameslink train into different lengths, which is non-trivial because they are walk-through and not “designed” to be broken up.
@Ianno87
Current bus fares are also below where they were 7 years ago in real terms. The £1.50 rate introduced in 2015 would today be equal to around £1.90-95.; for 2019 it would be around £1.80.
Assuming fares broadly track inflation than a £2 fare by 2025 or even 2024 looks likely
“I do sometimes wonder if various departments in TfL are individually pushing forward their own policies without total regard for other issues.”
That instantly reminded me of this bit of Yes Minister:
“I can’t remember all their names, but each one was from a different division: one from Air, one from Road and one from Rail. It was extraordinarily acrimonious. … The meeting is the sort that would be described in a communique as ‘frank’. Or even ‘frank, bordering on direct’, which means that the cleaners have to mop up the blood in the morning.”
A reasonable editorial, I anticipated an earlier reference to tourists who only appear as an afterthought. It’s as if they were discouraged and never significant.
The auto-correct gremlin is strong in the comments. For a delayed reading there are remaining semantics in the editorial body:
on a day-today basis, next sentence = but day-to-day subsidy
some say in how the money is spend = spent
or plans to increase pedestrianized area. = pedestrianisation or a ‘the’
increasing bus services do not tend = does
Starting from the current level of bus usage in central London, it seems difficult to argue with the conclusion that a reduction in bus mileage in central London is justified (I have no idea whether the reductions proposed are the least damaging).
However, the current level of bus usage is at least in part a consequence of significantly slowing central London bus speeds in recent years as well as improved tube etc alternatives. Those slowing bus speeds reflect policy decisions (or neglected decisions) and it may be appropriate to question those decisions.
As the article notes, given the restricted road space there is a tension between the provision of cycle lanes and the provision of bus lanes (and to an extent footpath width). The previous and current mayors have both removed bus lanes to extend cycle lanes. The evidence base for this has not been made public (to my knowledge) although the acknowledgment that a number of the cycle routes were pushed forward despite benefit to cost ratios of below 1.0 suggest that the choices were ideologically driven rather than evidence based. In many places, encouraging cycle us promotes modal transfer from private cars. In central London this is unlikely to be true – past policies have severely limited the use of private cars in London – so cycle use will largely transfer from public transport. In this context, replacing bus lanes by cycle lanes would seem to be promoting the interests of young fit travellers with other options over those of bus users who may have more limited choices. And it would appear to reduce road capacity overall – 50+ cycles take up a lot more road space than 1 bus. Promotion of cycling is presented as green and virtuous – and will generally be so – but in central London will not be so if the effect is largely to handicap buses rather than encourage modal transfer from cars.
Another significant trend in central London has been the increase in private hire and delivery vehicles. Altering the congestion charge from a flat daily levy to a mileage or time based charge could have discouraged this growth and protected bus speeds. The previous and current mayors have both failed to act on this issue.
So, given where we are, I think the bus cuts are inevitable and justified. But I also think we should never have got here.
I had recalled seeing this discussion about ten years ago, from outside observers.
Here are some links that may be of interest for the current debate.
https://nqrw.blogspot.com/2010/11/london-buses-universal-appeal-of.html
https://humantransit.org/2010/11/connections-vs-complexity.html
While I don’t have a detailed view on the proposals, as a principle, reducing busses within the traditional “circle line” area seems sensible.
Reliability is the key thing and if a journey will require a change but the frequency is acceptable that seems ok to me.
Couple more typos, sorry: Osborne/Osbourne; and Thameslink compliments [says nice things to], rather than complements [adds to], Crossrail.
Re highway space allocation, some local authorities (I believe York was a pioneer) have hierarchies, generally with pedestrians at the top followed by cyclists and buses, and private cars at the bottom (though often the opposite can still appear to be the case). Does TfL have such a thing?
[No apologies necessary for pointing out typos and wrong words used. I believe all outstanding reported errors are now fixed. PoP]
Some of the detail of the changes seems to involve some bizarre choices. In the changes illusrated, the new Waterloo to Fulham route 507 follows part of the withdrawn route 11 (an extended 26 covers the other half), before diverting at Victoria to Waterloo via Westminster Bridge to cover a withdrawn section of the 211. But the existing route 507 bears almost no relationship to that route, as it follows a different route between Victoria and Waterloo via Lambeth Bridge, which would be covered in the proposals by route C10 and a modified route 3.
In addition, with the proposed withdrawal of route 521 (which would, sadly, end 116 years of public transport use of the Strand Underpass in its various guises) the 507 would be an extreme outlier in the numbering system, being the only 5xx route left (other than temporary routes operated during roadworks that sever a route, such as the current 533 connecting the two ends of Hammersmith Bridge).
I suspect the operators plan to use the depot and rolling stock of the existing 507 to run the new route to Fulham, but from a passenger point of view it would make more sense to call it the No 11.
TfL’s proposals involve a number of similar changes, and in each case it is the time-honoured, lower and more memorable route number wihich is proposed to be lost. 4/236, 12/148, 14/414, 16/98, 24/214, 74/430. Is this deliberate PR by TfL, to demonstrate how draconian are the cuts being forced on them by the nasty Government’s penny-pinching. (note that the 11, 12 and 24 all travel down Whitehall)
timbeau,
Is this deliberate PR by TfL, to demonstrate how draconian are the cuts being forced on them by the nasty Government’s penny-pinching? (note that the 11, 12 and 24 all travel down Whitehall).
If so, such political messaging is nothing new. It was not a coincidence that route 24 was amongst the first to be privatised and had distinctive green buses for a traditional ‘red route’ going past parliament. It was said that Margaret Thatcher wanted all buses that served Parliament Square to be any colour other than red.
I have to admit I thought the changes were needlessly drastic as if a point was being made.
Possible typo: “Proposals at the time for a vastly improved and badly needed expansion of Camden Town station (‘doing nothing is not an option’) have still not been fulfilled despite the continuing political will and money begin available in the early years of the proposal.”
I’m guessing ‘begin’ should perhaps instead read as ‘being’?
[Yes. Corrected. Thanks. PoP]
As a mostly-disabled transport user, sometimes restricted to a wheelchair, I tend to use buses more than tubes/trains because of the surface-level access so I’ve been aware of the changes in my own local services. I have a worry though that, like post offices “we’ve closed this one as there’s one within a mile” that the one they refer you to has subsequently been closed too, once you remove the routes which offer longer through journeys and replace them with shorter sectional ones needing multiple changes (eg Fulham B’way to Liverpool St above) then the network will slowly become less useful.
btw “With modern jacks suitable for buses”. “Jacks”?
“Another way of looking at things is to consider the highway space available in central London and decide how best use could be made of it. Would running a frequent service of lightly-loaded buses really be the best option?”
I’m doubting that highway space would be saved by cutting bus services.
To reduce bus service frequency while maintaining access, fewer routes need to be run with connections enabling access between routes. This applies to both bus/rail and bus/bus connections. Toronto is an excellent example of this principle, where nearly every bus service terminates at the subway faregates and bus stops are located on corners reducing the walking distance to crossing routes to a minimum. One corridor, one route.
I have spent a good week from afar trying to figure out what the design for bus/tube and bus/bus connections is in London. A fool’s errand apparently.
Of 30 Zone 1 sub-surface stations (double counting Paddington), which should have the easiest access to the surface routes, only 9 provide easy connections (less than 125 meters from station entrance to bus stop). Many could have better access with more rational bus stop placement. At Blackfriars, stops along New Bridge St are needlessly placed around 180 meters from the station entrance. Both at Tower Hill and at Aldgate/Aldgate East, one can give up on connecting to a bus going south over Tower Bridge. One-way schemes place a further strain such as at Earls Court, where connecting southbound requires a long block’s walk.
London bus stops are also placed largely mid-block, where they are out of the way of both intersection treatments and connecting passengers. This is compounded by the prevelence of roudabouts that place opposite corners of an intersection even farther away. At Hyde Park Corner, an east to north connection would entail a march of around 250 meters.
Today, the lack of connectivity doesn’t matter as much because one can take a bus that turns in the desired direction. (It’s still too confusing for spontaneous travel). If the number of routes is to be diminished for efficiency, prime locations in front of station entrances and at intersections will have to be reallocated to buses.
@fbfree
This is an interesting observation; I think outside Central London, bus stop placement and related connectivity isn’t quite so bad, but within Zone 1, it’s certainly a challenge – Hyde Park Corner is a great example of a crucial intersection that fails entirely to meet the needs of a bus interchange, and it’s hard to see how that could ever be addressed, given various historical monuments and memorials constraining the site.
I think it suits all sides to style the bus cuts to make it appear as if they’re worse than they really are, in terms of certain low route numbers being axed.
For the mayor, it means he can count on howls of protest, and that will help secure ongoing funding in other areas.
For the government it means they can frame it as causing London pain, which plays well to some other parts of the country.
Having read through the changes they seem reasonable and measured, I personally lament the loss of some key long-standing routes and their numbers, but much of this pain is superficial as for all practical purposes the same places are still going to be served by buses operating at regular enough frequencies to be convenient and meet demand. Of course some previously through journeys will now require interchange, and this is inconvenient and will add to journey times for some real people, but in the best possible way, I think the impacts will be modest.
Still, I will be completing the consultation and opposing the cuts because, cynically, I take the view that insufficient opposition now will invite further, more significant cuts in the future.
See also the issues connecting in the westbound/southbound directions between routes around Tottenham Court Road station with the 1 and 8 terminating at St Giles Church. Even worse, the 73 and 390 southbound now have no stop anywhere near the junction and station, non-stop between Stephen Street and Dean Street.
I would be interested in bus mileage & bus pax km (or failing that bus boardings) within Zone 1, yera-by-year over the last 40 or so years. Does such data exists?
@Paul
Is it that central London’s bus network was designed as an alternative to the Tube network, rather than a complementary network designed to interchange with the Tube network?
The article makes a good point that, unlike railway closures, cuts to buses can be reversed relatively easily in the future. A lot of the hysteria around these changes fails to account for this.
@LongBranchMike
If there was no intended interchange with the tube, then there should at least be an interchange between bus routes. There’s no good connection towards High Holborn from Tottenham Ct Rd.
In addition, if the networks were conceived to be complementary, they should provide services to different corridors. The buses would take Gower/Bloomsbery over Tottenham Ct, it being already served by the Northern Line.
@James
While reversing bus cuts is definitely easier than building a new tube line, ideally the physical infrastructure (bus stops, intersection bus priority systems, shelters, depots) should be well-adapted to the bus route network actually being run. This makes running the network more efficient (and cheaper), but also optimises the road space used. Designing a good bus network requires design, thought, and lead time beyond just phyiscally ordering the buses and drivers to run them. Equally reversing cuts also requires designing the roads to accommadate this. Re-designing roads every time the bus network changes either becomes infeasible or hideously expensive as the rate of change increases, leading to suboptimal results.
Either you want to change the network gradually, or you should have a long-term strategic goal and an idea of what you want the bus network to look like once the changes are complete (e.g. 10 years from now). Both are difficult with funding settlements of 2 weeks to say the least. I suspect that such a rigourous analysis would show that in many cases replacing buses along certain corridors entirely (e.g. with light rail) would be the optimal solution from a cost-benefit and network quality perspective, but that discussion opens an entirely different can of worms.
AlisonW – as no-one has picked up on your query, “jacks” is referring to equipment for lifting buses to get at the underneath for maintenance, removing the need for traditional purpose-built pits in the ground and making it much easier to set up a new garage from scratch. Sadly this does often seem to result in the use of scrappy bits of wasteland with minimal protection from the weather for the vehicles or the maintenance staff.
@LongBranchMike
I think this is true, with fare disparity – and lack of free transfers – being a deliberate policy to encourage many inner London residents to use the Tube and therefore reduce overcrowding on that network.
Alison W and Andrew S:
Equality campaigners are eagerly awaiting the installation of the first Jills in a bus garage, in London or elsewhere.
Late to the party somewhat…
The opening of Crossrail/Lizzie has obviously made a significant improvement to capacity along its alignment, and the completion of
Thameslink 2000The Thameslink Program has done similar for its catchment area. While another commenter mentioned bus-tube interchange, there is a real risk that pushing bus passengers onto the tube could easily overwhelm it should there be even a fairly modest increase in passengers. Diverting bus passengers onto Crossrail and Thameslink’s big trains should not present such an issue, and most of the central area is reasonably accessible from those, possibly with a change between the two at Farringdon.Re-planning routes so that local(ish) buses feed these rail lines would continue to offer bus service to places that need it, would offer faster journey times into the central area, even accounting for the interchange and platform-to-street times, reduce bus mileage (kilometerage?) and bus congestion in the central area without impacting tube services.
Living near Fwrringdon we have an excellent train service – N,S,E&W – although experienced a first Crossrail delay today at TCR due to broken down train at Paddington. Diverted to hot stuffy 55 – a service unaffected by the proposed cuts. Yesterday evening a west bound 243 was full, which is concerning as it’s the only direct bus service from North Barbican/Golden Lane Estate to Waterloo.
The availability of, non-crossrail, underground trains in central London is useless to numerous passengers because of the lack of step-free accessibility. Helping an elderly couple drag their suitcases up from the eastern platform at Barbican the other day was an uncomfortable reminder. In fact, ten of 13 stations in the City don’t have full step-free accessibility, so buses serving stations and hospitals have to be retained and should be direct as well, otherwise there’s just increased black cabs and Ubers. Even now, GLE to Fenchurch Street with cases and children by fully accessible step-free access or direct buses is a challenge but the route changes planned for such as the 43, 205 and 242 will adversely affect many passengers.
Not a slight reduction in service on trains into central London. 50% cut on some routes. Off peak too, even though it’s peak travel that has reduced NOT off peak.
I’m minded to think of central Cologne, where buses are just about non-existent in the central part of the city. I’ve always been mystified by their huge numbers in central London, with its very dense Tube network.
Buses should complement the rail network, not compete with it
Stuart S
Isn’t that because Cologne is primarily served by trams rather than buses?
Many of the trams in the centre are quite deep underground and more analogous to the tube. A more important point is that central Köln is little bigger than the City of London.
Additionally, like many European cities outside the UK, there is no difference in fare between modes.