Superloop is super loopy so far

Thursday 20th July 2023

TfL began the roll out of its Superloop brand on Saturday so I thought I’d take a look and see how it’s bedding in.

The first thing that bugs me about this whole Superloop business is over the last couple of months TfL have spent £30,000 of its own scarce funds plus £40,000 of Heathrow Airport’s money on rebranding all ten buses on route X26 with no mention of Superloop…

…yet the route is the south-west segment of the almost-orbital-around-London loop. You’d think such a high profile route as the X26 would have been the obvious choice to kick start the introduction of Superloop, not least if £70,000 is being spent on vinyl.

But no, TfL has chosen limited stop route 607 to be the first to be given the Superloop makeover. The X26 will have to wait it’s turn. TfL want to do the odd ball Superloop routes first.

Because instead of being part of the ‘loop’, route 607 is one of the three ‘spokes’ added to the network in a somewhat nonsensical move by TfL’s planners. It’s the route running from White City/Shepherds Bush westwards in a ‘nine o’clock’ direction via Acton, Ealing and Southall then skimming the outskirts of Hayes before reaching Uxbridge.

What’s more, not only have the 20 buses allocated to the 607 and 42 bus stops and shelters along the route been given the Superloop branding treatment but the route number has been changed from 607 (which fits logically and nicely with the parallel and long established stopping at all stops route 207 for much of the journey)…

… to now be known as SL8 as part of the completely illogical new numbering scheme planned for the ten routes in the Superloop network. Diamond Geezer’s excellent blog managed to get hold of the minutes of a recent meeting of TfL’s Superloop Nomenclature Committee which clearly explains why it’s all totally illogical and just plain daft.

Add to all that the fact the western end of the 607 (now SL8) is also paralleled by the all stops 427 (another route ending in 7) it makes the choice of SL8 all the more odd. I suppose one morsel of logic could be it’s so different it’ll stand out.

Despite the aforementioned illogicality, full marks to TfL’s marketing people who’ve gone overboard in making passengers aware of the renumbering.

Bus stop flags have all had white on bright red ‘E-plates’ added with a Superloop name plate and inside buses the next stop displays constantly remind you about the new regime with an announcement playing out after every stop name is called – all 24 of them making for a tedious listen when making an end to end journey, and it’s not as if you’re not already aware of the change having successfully boarded the renumbered bus.

All bus shelters along the route have had a Superloop roundel added to the roof which does make it very clear which stops are included in the limited stop arrangements so full marks for that idea.

Exceptions are the penultimate stop before Uxbridge (Park Road)….

… and for some unexplained reason the stop at Uxbridge County Court has been missed and is currently roundel less.

It was good to see the spider map at White City had been updated with new references to the SL8 and pleasingly I see others along the line of route (where they still exist) have been done too, as well as online.

Route SL8 takes 20 buses to operate the hour and fifteen to thirty minute long route (depending on time of day) on a 10 minute frequency. Staff at Metroline, the operator, have worked hard to apply the Superloop vinyls to enough buses although on my journey along the route on Tuesday one bus had escaped from the garage at Greenford without being treated.

Buses used on the service are four year old hybrid Volvo B5LH buses with EvoSeti bodies and have the usual basic interiors for London, rather than the more upmarket enhancements of the latest deliveries.

Like the roundels on top of bus shelters the white vinyl around the upper deck and on the roof of the buses certainly makes them stand out as they approach bus stops from a distance and no doubt this will be appreciated by passengers.

Personally I’m not keen on the multi coloured roundel …

… and I don’t think the between decks line diagram stands out enough with only three intermediate places served being shown (Hayes, Ealing Hospital and Ealing Broadway), and of these, Hayes isn’t really served with the route a fair distance from ‘Hayes Town’ and why no mention of Southall, Hanwell or Acton?

It’s also a missed opportunity to not highlight the key selling points of the route, not least its frequency and quicker journey times by being limited stop. At least the X26 branding (shown earlier) highlights the bargain basement £1.75 fare in its messaging.

There is a micro mention of it being an “express bus service” under the Superloop name on the side, but Metroline being “a member of Comfort DelGro” gets a bigger mention which is hardly relevant to passengers.

To continue the rather loopy roll out of this concept the next route to succumb is the uni-directional peak hour only X68 between Russell Square and West Croydon from 31st July.

It’s another spoke route (pointing down to six o’clock) rather than being part of the loop. It will become SL6. Posters are already on display at bus stops along the route …

… including at the Russell Square terminus unhelpfully covering up the departure times for this peak only service.

I’ve just not bought into the concept of the 607 and X68 being part of the Superloop brand as well as the yet to be introduced X239 (SL8) between Canary Wharf and Grove Park through the yet to be built Silvertown Tunnel. To me they detract from the loop/radial concept and just confuse things. By all means give these three routes some effective branding and highlight their unique characteristics with suitable marketing but don’t make out they’re part of a ‘loop’ network because they’re not.

Still, it’s good to see TfL learning about effective route branding from provincial bus companies and giving the development of more limited stop routes a try. I’m just not sure about the way it’s being enacted.

It’s a great shame the marketing people at TfL, who don’t specialise in bus and therefore don’t know how to effectively market a bus route and bus network, don’t specialise in bus and therefore might come to know how to effectively market a bus route and bus network as it should be done.

Maybe we’d even get a network map if they did.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS with Su DRT extras.

42 thoughts on “Superloop is super loopy so far”

  1. I broke the habit of a lifetime and travelled on Route SL8 on the first day …. I reckon 15 out of 20 buses were branded, which is pretty good, bearing in mind they’re all in service every day.

    Express?? Maybe Limited Stop would be better …. with around one third of the route on 20 MPH roads, it is hardly express!!

    I travelled westbound, and we queued for 5 minutes at Ealing Common to access a bus lane, and this was at 11.30. The 20 limit even applies past Ealing Hospital … a dual carriageway!!!

    I found the journey tedious … just as well there are only 24 stops!! I wouldn’t do it again …. by tube (via Bond Street) it’s quicker from White City to Uxbridge!!! That says it all really ….

    Liked by 2 people

  2. I suppose Acton is too “complicated” for the diagram designers, given that there’s a tube station, town centre and an overground, but both at completely different stops along the route, so best ignore the whole thing I guess.

    One thing missed from the post. The SL8, while not really getting much of an internal refresh, has had USB-A chargers added. Pity those of us with newer devices (like a disproportionate number of Londoners) will be unable to use them with our USB-C cables!

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  3. The X68 yellow poster notice describes Superloop as “proposed” and confirms this by using peculiar grammar in saying that it “would help” improve connections, so what confidence can we have that it will really happen?

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  4. I don’t suppose there’s going to be much branding on the SLx68 buses as they mostly work on and off the 188 before or after their SL trips… (…they are basically 188 garage runs extended via west Croydon to and from Q)

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  5. Did not TfL have a rule that the buses had to be 90% red or has that rule now been dropped ?

    I am dubious of the Super Loop concept. Many routes already parallel these new routes. Will a few less stops make any real difference. Congestion is a real problem it is what finished off the Greenline network. Whilst East West rail links are poor it is still in most cases quicker to go into central London and back out

    Whether you could have an M25 Superloop who knows. It would mainly service the towns just outside London . It would provide as lot of useful links but again congestion will be an issue. When the M25 sizes up everything grind to a halt for miles around

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  6. One Superloop not mentioned [as it hasn’t started yet, the SL4 Canary Wharf-Grove Park, which is not going to connect with any other Superloop route, which is barmy.

    Those wanting bus franchising elsewhere should be careful what they wish for.

    TFL have been spending a good amount of money on introducing the Superloop concept, whilst cutting & reducing frequencies on other routes, this at a time when TFL are claiming poverty.

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    1. Actually, whether it should be designated a Superloop route or not, the links in the corridor between Bromley, and Canary Wharf have always been exceptionally poor, so I can see a case for an express bus here. But why stop at Bromley North?! I suppose you can get the Southeastern shuttle to Bromley North from there! Surely this route should have run to Bromley South for its much greater connectivity.

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  7. If the odd and messy branding of the X26 wasted £70,000, God knows what this lot has cost? All that was needed was “Superloop” branding to be applied between decks at about 10% of the cost. Thus, it appears, different branding styles will be applies to different routes, unless they can get a refund on the X26 vinyls and the vehicles made to look like “SL8s”! And as Mackay points out, the X68 is interworked crew and vehicle wise with the 188 at least, another good reason many companies do not route brand their buses. Or perhaps, in the land of TfL waste, a different set of vehicles are to be kept for just the X68? Nothing would surprise me.

    The re-numbering of the 607 could, if TfL staff had any sense of history, at least have been made the “S7”, the 7 (tram), 607 (trolleybus) and 207 (bus) being the number used for way over a century along the Uxbridge Road. Limited stop services throughout UK are better known under the “X” brand, and “SL” will mean nothing to most people.

    The concept is good, as the limited stop nature of services in urban areas does reduce journey times and tedium for longer distance passengers, none more so than the excellent X26. But as always in TfL land, it will come at an unnecessarily high price and overkill, and take years of “consultations” to redress any changes required.

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    1. SL7 would have made more sense. I’m guessing the massive “Superloop” on the side will soon educate the public on what SL stands for though!

      Liked by 1 person

    2. The 188 is shortly to transfer to Morden Wharf garage and the 1’s to Camberwell so I don’t think the former X68 will be interested with the 1’s more like Branded buses will sit in the yard during the peaks instead!

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    3. The 188 is shortly to transfer to Morden Wharf garage and the 1’s to Camberwell so I don’t think the former X68 will be interworked with the 1’s more like Branded buses will sit in the yard during the peaks instead!

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  8. I thought that the X26 was to receive branding shortly after Metrobus won the current contract 5 or 7 years ago. Maybe the costs of the current branding were already built into the old contract price, so maybe not an extra cost?

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  9. I used to work for TfL and it has all the strengths – and weaknesses – of a monopolistic bureaucracy.

    Whenever I suggested more express bus routes, the routine answer was that they were not justified because they often get stuck in traffic and people want to get off at the intermediate stops. It always made more sense to put any additional resources into strengthening frequencies on existing routes (it was said).

    And now we have Loop routes that are not new, but radial long established routes with a bit of (illogical) re-branding.

    We aren’t talking about trams here, but it is quite astonishing that the Croydon Tramlink, ideal for an outer London transport network, has not been expanded one jot since opening in 2000, which is just an embarrassment. (See Paris, or even Manchester). And the proposed extensions we do have do not make any sense at all from a network point of view. Instead they are a kind of political wish list to “have a tram” and indeed entirely dissociated from Croydon, such as the ridiculous scheme for a tram route from Sutton (but of course not along the main shopping street) to somewhere vaguely near Modern, but not actually Morden Underground station!

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    1. Generally I would agree with the LT planners that strengthening existing trunk routes, perhaps widening stop spacing where possible and appropriate and adding bus priority measures is preferable to bolting on parallel express routes. But I did use the X140 from Harrow to Heathrow the other day and it did make a positive difference. So it’s horses for courses. I think there has been an unnecessary rush to get the 607/SL8 into circulation because of the Uxbridge by election and that’s always dangerous but I hope the concept works. I’m well aware that as a London resident the bus services I get here are an order of magnitude better than anything outside with a handful of notable exceptions.

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    2. I’ve often felt that on some higher frequency routes/corridors that journey speeds could be improved (for most) by “skip stopping”, i.e. some buses skip every other stop; with two patterns (“A” and “B” stops, with some stops/buses being “AB” for very popular origins/destinations and interchanges between A and B routes for people who can’t walk one stop and get single seat travel).

      You would change route numbers to indicate which stops are called at and which are skipped e.g. 13 would become 13A and 13B.

      Other similar approaches could work e.g. different “limited stop” sections (groups of stops skipped/deviations) at extremities of a route.

      Liked by 1 person

  10. Certainly the day before the SB8 started there were no Superloop on stops at White City or Shepherds Bush Station. Maybe they appeared before your visit. As I understand it, two buses were being wrapped each day, so by now I expect they are all.done.

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  11. The rule seems to be that buses in Superloop vinyls should not be used on other routes, including rail replacements, those on the SL8 also have blinds for 607 for obvious reasons, but do have E9 blinds for absolute emergency use. So presumably the X68 renumbering will cost extra buses? It’s sad that TfL insisted the white on blue blinds used on the 607 have had to change to conventional white on black. In addition the LIMITED STOP that used to be shown on the blinds has had to be removed too. I wonder if this means the SL6 buses will no longer be allowed ti show FIRST SET DOWN details ?

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  12. I think the Superloop routes should be made more distinctive and be like Belfast’s Glider or the upcoming Birmingham Sprint. Oh and removing pinch points that cause five minute waits to access a bus lane, plus traffic signal pre-emption.

    There are plenty of examples in France to learn from. They call it BHLS, Bus with a Higher Level of Service. I wonder if TfL or indeed any UK transport professionals are aware of this?

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  13. When I lived in Birmingham in 1987/8 they had a similar thing called the Outer Circle which went around the rim of Birmingham.I think that it was numbered 8 and 8A although I never went on it.I believe that it no longer runs?There was an Inner Circle too covering the inner Birmingham suburbs.Friends from the Birmingham area told me that the Outer Circle took hours too get around Birmingham.

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    1. The 8A and 8C was/is the Inner Circle, still running and I believe still a continuous loop. The 11A/C was the Outer Circle which was a continuous loop but got split a few months ago due to roadworks causing unpredictable delays, so it is now two overlapping routes.
      It may take a while to go all the way round, but it is still phenomenally busy with lots of overlapping local journeys, which is why it still exists.

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      1. Correct, the 8A/C Inner Circle still operates as a loop, taking between 45mins to 1hr to get around. The 11A/C is still known as the Outer Circle, though as you say it was split into two sections due to roadworks at Perry Barr ahead of the Commonwealth Games. The Games have been and gone, and the roadworks were completed, yet there is still no sign of the route being joined back together, due to neverending roadworks elsewhere around the route making the service ever more unreliable. Probably takes around 3 hours to do a full circuit now, depending on how long you would have to wait at Acocks Green or Perry Barr/Erdington.

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  14. So what about other routes that could be added to the Superloop network ? Route 205 would be a good contender as this is a station link service (as was the SL1 some years ago). Why not cut out some of the stops and ‘express’ it ? Where is TfLs vision on this or are they only concerned short term to come up with a few gimmicks to get Khan re-elected ?

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  15. There is a lot to applaud about SuperLoop. Speeding up journey times, creating new links, good branding, good publicity, raising awareness of connections beyond the bus outside your local stop and a common branding for express services being the ones that come to mind.

    All well and good for the loop, but the radial routes are an embarrassment. The word “loop” hardly works, the 3 routes couldn’t be more different to one another and to the SL concept and if anything, including them highlights the sparsity and inadequacy of radial express routes, especially in their present form and thereby damages the SuperLoop brand. Surely the X68 (old numbers used here just for familiarity) could become an all-day service? Logically the X239 should be extended to Bromley. At least that would give three spokes (SuperSpokes?)

    I’m sure we could all suggest other radial candidates. A reintroduction of the X43, what about the old 616 to both restore the Victoria to Cricklewood link but also link up with the rest of SL at Neasden? Then there are high frequency routes just like the 140 and 607 which, if given an express variant, might reverse the passenger declines. X15, X5, X25, X38, X149 etc. That would start to paint a proper network image. I’m trying not to be a bus fantasist here, just drawing a conclusion that if speeding up journey times for longer distance passengers has generated overall growth on the 140 corridor, then why confine it to radial routes?

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    1. I agree that it would be better if the 20mph limit were lifted but that doesn’t stop there being some speed benefit coming from the service being a limited stop.

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  17. So this rushed roll-out by Khan during the purdah period didn’t swing the Uxbridge by-election after all! 😂

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  18. I’m sure the SL8 on its own, even if it had been in place for six months, would not have been enough to convince many Uxbridge people to vote for the ULEZ; personally I’m for the ULEZ, but there are lots of other missing links in the public transport system in outer London, and people don’t use their cars just to get to Ealing and Shepherd’s Bush! What might have done the trick is a proper network of express buses to Watford, an outer SuperLoop to Elstree, Potters Bar, Enfield etc., and south to Ashford, Weybridge, Cobham etc., plus Slough and Beaconsfield – all giving rail connections to the ‘rest of England’.

    Like yourself and several of the commenters above, I am a bit puzzled by the radial routes, but the basic loop itself appears to be a good start, and it’s interesting that the X140 has already generated some extra travel, possibly because it connects with all the radial rail and underground routes it crosses.

    I do hope it develops both as an adjunct to the Overground and as an extra to the bus network. As a bus, it starts with some advantages: 1) routes can be st up and modified quickly – just the time involved in advertising, changing information at stops and on the web-site, (hopefully) installing bus priority measures, and sourcing buses and drivers. 2) As well as the sections of route planned to make up the Loop, there could be overlapping routes, starting halfway along e.g. the X140 and carrying on halfway along the next route section (from Harrow to Finchley, I think). This would mean that most journeys taken which started on a radial route, used the Loop, and ended on another radial, did not necessarily have the added complication of a bus change while following the Loop. Not only that, but these overlapping routes could also start or terminate off the Loop, to serve important out-lying places. For example, if one day an extra Loop was added, running along the north circular road (along which many connections would be available to radial rail/tube lines) buses could also link to, say, Woodford, to give a connection with the Central Line east.

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  19. I seem to recall that the 607 was numbered such as a direct homage to the trolleybus route which was replaced by the 207 bus.

    Renumbering long-established routes is something that too many operators do “just because”, such as Stagecoach East Midlands renumbering the Lincoln – Skegness route from 6 to 56 because someone decided that they wanted all “InterConnect” routes to be in the 50-series. The Lincoln – Skegness route had only been numbered 6 for some 90 years, so it was clearly not an established and well-known identity…

    Let us also not forget TrentBarton and Transdev’s regular renumbering/renaming exercises as part of rebranding, which somehow always get lauded as being wonderful.

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  20. The SL8 gets extended operating hours from mid-August so any rebranding would have made far more sense then. The hurried launch and confusing renumbering (which wasn’t mentioned in the original publicity) can only have come from the Mayor’s office rather than TfL.

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  21. I can’t really see the point in the concept of the Superloop branding at all. People want to get between places quicker, they don’t want to specifically go in a loop. So why not just expand the use of X prefixes along with differentiating the quality and branding of the buses. I’m sure something along the lines of some of the more enlightened private operators like Transdev’s Coastliner would go down well & might even persuade people to give the bus a chance.

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  22. This is pure politics by Khan to say he has something to mitigate the ULEZ extension but doing the 607 and X68 is ridiculous – they don’t form part of any loop! The X68 is a very useful service, providing a (relatively) quick bus to central London from the Upper and South Norwood areas which, unusually for London, are very remote from rail services, and is well used by commuters. It has nothing in common with the other services in Superloop, and the current number reflects that it runs parallel with the 68 and 468 (in fact it duplicated the 468 when it becomes an all stops service beyond West Norwood). An absurd decision

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  24. Nice to see roundels on bus stops again, when was the last time they appeared as “stand alone” ones in LT days ? (I can think of some GREEN LINE ones and LONDON TRANSPORT, but they tended to be in the bus stations of the country area rather than the traditional red bus places). Agreed that some kind of marketing of Shepherds Bush- Tottenham Court Road and Marble Arch – Canning Town and Aldgate-Romford – Brentwood via Stratford and Blackfriars-Romford via East Ham and Barking could be useful, thus completing the Bar through the middle of the loop of the roundel design and perhaps operated by electrified borismasters. The other “Spoke” routes indeed as mentioned heading to Watford , Slough, Staines, Guildford, Leatherhead/Dorking, Sevenoaks , Dartford/Ebbsfleet , Grays , Brentwood, Harlow, Stevenage , Luton and Hemel Hempstead, maybe could be numbered in a 7xx series and pained green as a contrast.

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    1. It is a slight frustration at a general reduction in service levels, including cross border services, where, particulary with ULEZ an increase in frequencies on services could encourage further switching from car travel to bus travel. (I am taking about half hourly or less services that could easily take an uplift to 20min or 15 min service patterns and others that have reduced to 12/15 min services that need 8/10 min frequencies.

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    2. Yes, especially as expanding the ULEZ was an instruction by Grant Shapps in May 2020 as one of the conditions in the “Transport for London:Extraordinary Funding and Financial Agreement”. The Mayor was told to immediately reintroduce the the congestion charge, LEZ, and ULEZ (suspended at the start of the pandemic) and “urgently bring forward proposals to widen the scope and levels of these charges….”

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  26. one wonders how the livery is going to match with the Electric Bus loop livery logo that is appearing on double decks the last few weeks

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  27. Is the proposed network worth another four day trip around London using the existing bus services / SL where it exists

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  28. SUPERLOOP 7 needs additional stops between Hatton Cross and Teddington. I spend half an hour from West Twickenham trying to get on it. Cut out stops in the Cheam area where they seem to be every 100 yards ! The 490 Heathrow to Richmond needs expressing too. Its already too crowded at times and ULEZ will add to this.

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