3 mini London bus blogs

Thursday 11th December 2025

Has TfL given up on Putney High Street?

Never mind Oxford Street, it’s Putney High Street that’s got the bigger problem of air quality from slow moving traffic. The south west London shopping street leads south from Putney Bridge and is notorious for almost round-the clock daytime congestion and just like Oxford Street, where bus routes have been removed by stealth over the last ten years or more, a new consultation from TfL proposes to split a route into two that currently passes along the road with one half operating south of the traffic hotspot and the other north.

It’s the infrequent ’round the houses’ route 424 which links Putney Heath and narrow residential roads south of Putney High Street with back roads in Chelsea, Sands End and Fulham in one of TfL’s specialty ‘circuitous side road tours’.

OK, it’s not one of the long standing big hitter routes linking Putney with central London (14, 74) nor trunk routes to Kingston, Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Shepherds Bush, South Kensington and Tolworth (85, 93, 220, 265, 430) nor a strategic local route to Clapham Junction (39) – all these make for around 45 buses an hour in each direction passing through all or part of High Street during daytime hours and I am sure will long continue. Route 424 on the other hand runs somewhat inconveniently every 35 minutes so it’s withdrawal won’t make much of a dent in the bumper to bumper queues.

Withdrawing route 424 from High Street will however have the boon of providing a more consistent and reliable service for passengers using the two truncated replacement routes if the proposal goes ahead. Indeed TfL’s consultation explains “these proposals will address the reliability issues that existing route 424 faces due to congestion on Putney High Street. The proposed routes would no longer serve this area which should lead to improved reliability of the bus routes in the areas that will continue to be served. This is consistent with the Mayor’s Transport Strategy to reshape the London bus network to redistribute resources to reflect changing patterns of demand.”

I won’t pick holes in that statement as I understand the tenor of what it’s trying to say but if the Mayor’s “Transport Strategy” really is based on avoiding rather than tackling congestion then the long term consequences are concerning.

As you can see from TfL’s explanatory map, there are also plans to amend the northern part of the existing route in Sands End close to Imperial Wharf station so larger buses can be used on the newly numbered route 454 and a tight corner and narrow street will no longer pose a challenge.

I took a ride on the route earlier this month to see how many passengers will be inconvenienced by the withdrawal of the cross Putney facility.

TfL states “196 unique trips per weekday on existing route 424 would be broken. This means passengers would need to walk further to a bus stop and change. These journeys are mainly to/from Sands End Sainsbury’s, Putney Hill and Putney Station.” That works out at an average of four passengers on each of the 47 journeys per weekday.

The journey I sampled – the 10:43 from Putney Heath over to Fulham’s football ground via Chelsea’s football ground – was definitely a route of two halves. Just four passengers boarded in Ashburton Estate in the twiddly bit of Hail & Ride route south of Putney High Street with two of these alighting as soon as we reached Putney station at the southern end of the High Street, and when the driver played out the announcement there’d be a change of drivers and the engine was turned off, the other two promptly left, leaving just me on board for the three minutes it took for the two drivers to do the necessary handover.

We set off for the crawl northwards along High Street at 10:59 reaching the next bus stop at the Putney Exchange shopping centre (370 metres/404 yards away) at 11:07 making for an average speed of 1.7 mph on that short stretch. No wonder the other two passengers alighted, and no wonder TfL are drawing a line under this.

After that it was plain sailing for the northern half of the route as we wandered around Sands End, Chelsea and Fulham. Indeed, that part of the route also fell into two halves with 19 boarding at various bus stops with a maximum number on board at any one time of 10 but we emptied out again by Fulham Broadway with two travelling from there for a couple of stops and three more travelling over to the back streets by Craven Cottage where the route terminates.

During the journey we passed the other four buses on the route all with similar numbers on board as the bus I was on at each location.

The 424, along with its soon-to-be-partner, 454, serve a particular need for very localised travel linking otherwise unserved back street residential roads with nearby shops, facilities and stations and as there’s very little need for a link either side of Putney Bridge it makes sense to split the route as TfL are proposing to improve reliability. Indeed I reckon almost all those 196 people TfL found are only travelling to one of the bus stops in the High Street itself, either just north of Putney station (towards Fulham) or just south of Putney Bridge station (towards Putney Heath), so the inconvenience will be minimal and the reward of a more reliable service welcomed.

But it does make you wonder about the reliability of the other routes that pass along Putney High Street and the padding that must be added to the schedules to counteract the congestion. Five minutes worth of congestion I observed at the northern end of the High Street was caused by a protracted driver changeover of a bus on route 14 which wasn’t a good advert for the impact of buses in the area.

If you want to let TfL know what you think about the changes to the 424 the consultation is open until Sunday 11th January.

Has TfL given up on Central London bus routes?

TfL has also launched two more consultations. One proposes yet further reductions in frequencies and links across Central London and the other reduces frequencies along a key North London corridors.

I’ve included two explanatory maps that recently appeared on Diamond Geezer’s excellent daily blog, as these are so much easier to understand that TfL’s offerings.

Long standing route 38 has provided a high frequency link between Clapton Pond, Hackney, Dalston and Islington to Holborn, Piccadilly, Hyde Park Corner and Victoria for over a century.

At one time it was one of London’s most frequent bus routes clinging on to its Routemasters until 2005, hosting Mercedes articulated buses until 2009, followed by New Routemasters. In the ‘good old days’ it would have been unthinkable to cut the route but it’s a measure of how much Central London’s bus network has fallen out of favour through intolerable slow speeds and continual thinning out of frequencies that it’s now just one of those things you expect every few months from TfL, which shows all the signs of having given up on Central London’s bus network.

The proposal will see route 38 cut back at its southern end to Holborn but the link to Victoria will be retained for passengers boarding south of Islington through a diversion of route 19 which parallels the 38 as far as Hyde Park Corner and will head down to Victoria instead of Battersea Bridge.

As part of the package there’ll be a new numbered route 10 to replace the 19 to Battersea Bridge which will commence in Balls Pond Road. The last time that route number was used was in 1988 when it replaced a truncated route 73 west of Hyde Park Corner as far as Hammersmith. It didn’t survive a previous Central London bus cull in 2018.

Suffice to say this latest proposal is once again all about reducing frequencies along the corridor which could easily have been achieved without messing around with route numbers and termini if TfL wasn’t so hidebound by its self imposed rule every bus on every journey must operate the full length of the route with no short workings timetabled, even though the reality is passengers are turfed off buses every day with hundreds of journeys cut short to get back on time and ironically at the northern end of the 38 there’ve been short workings scheduled for many years with alternate buses turning at Hackney Downs just short of Clapton Pond.

The other similar themed consultation is a proposal to thin out frequencies along Tottenham High Road, Seven Sisters Road and Caledonian Road. And if that sounds familiar it’s a rehash of a similar proposal back in 2022 which in the event TfL shied away from.

These three key arteries once had buses running so frequently there was always one in view and again it’s a measure of how far London’s bus network has fallen from its Mayor Livingstone peak glory days that frequency reductions are being considered for this important corridor.

The reduction will be achieved by withdrawing route 349 (introduced as recently as 2004) and diverting route 279 to terminate at Stamford Hill instead of Manor House and, as a separate strand, cut back route 259’s southern terminus to Holloway instead of King’s Cross, but in part mitigation of losing the 349, its northern terminus will be extended back to Ponders End instead of Edmonton. Again a decade or so ago, before the relentless vicious spiral of decline in London bus ridership, severing the direct link between north and south of Holloway along the Caledonian Road would have been unthinkable. Now it’s the reality.

TfL say the proposals have the benefit of improving reliability on a shortened route but there’s no doubt both proposals are all about frequency reductions.

TfL has lost the plot on running buses in Central London, and its continual downward spiral of reductions in frequencies leading to reductions in passengers leading to more reductions in frequencies is clear for all to see. Instead of dealing with the problem, these actions will simply exacerbate it.

Goodbye to route 283

And finally for these three mini London bus blogs, just to record this Saturday sees another route number disappear from the Capital’s bus network (I nearly typed ‘map’, but of course that disappeared back in 2016), and that’s over in west London with the removal of route 283.

TfL consulted on this change back in the summer with a closing date of 7th September, thus making for a very quick turnaround from one of its consultations. In essence it runs two routes between East Acton, Shepherds Bush and Hammersmith.

Route 72 sticks to the main roads and route 283 diverts off to serve the White City Estate on another circuitous side road routing pattern. Because other routes serve the main roads (Du Cane Road past Wormwood Scrubs and Wood Lane past the BBC’s former Television Centre) TfL wants to divert the 72 around the White City Estate and consequently withdraw the 283, making for a neat saving.

However, it received 709 responses to the proposal in the consultation with 75% negative about the idea, 13% neutral, 8% mixed and only 4% of the comments were positive. Some of the key concerns were the impact on patients and staff attending Hammersmith Hospital, loss of direct links to White City and Wood Lane stations, potential for longer journeys and overcrowding and reduced access to Wormwood Scrubs and Westfield.

Notwithstanding those responses the new arrangements go ahead from Saturday achieving more cost and frequency reductions for London’s beleaguered bus network.

Roger French

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