Tuesday 24th February 2026
Two mini-blogs for the price of one today. First up…
Arriva launches new express bus to Stansted Airport
Arriva revamped its bus routes between Harlow and Stansted Airport from Sunday including the launch of a brand new express route numbered 723 taking advantage of the M11 to give an end to end journey time of just 30 minutes. Consequential changes to the old pattern of routes 508, 509 and 510 via Sawbridgeworth and Bishops Stortford (and taking around an hour between Harlow and the airport) have seen a reduction in their combined frequency from every 10 to every 12 minutes and the withdrawal of the 508 as one of the three route variations with journeys numbered 509 now using the former 508 routing via Parsonage Estate and Takeley rather than running direct between Birchanger to the airport.
I popped over to Harlow yesterday to try out the new service but it was no thanks to the paucity of readily available information on Arriva’s appalling website. Checking on Sunday (the first day of the new 723) for the timetable the website told me “no buses found” when typing in 723 in the timetable look-up box…
… and scrolling through the long numerical listing of all the routes operated by Arriva I eventually got to the 700s on page five only to find no reference to route 723. I checked again last night, after two days of the new service and it’s still not listed and obviously there’s no printed timetable leaflet to help.
By digging around I found a link from Arriva’s social media account on X…
… to the new timetable…
… laid out in a new format for Arriva, which at least is easy to follow.
Which is more than can be said for the new timetable for the 509 and 510 which insists on combining variable times for journeys on schooldays (marked with a 1) with those on non schooldays (marked with a 2) into one presentation. Presumably the company assumes passengers know the local school calendar and the confusing presentation is to make it as hard as possible to find out when a bus will turn up.
And if, after taking a look at the above extract, you think I’m exaggerating, take a look at an extract from the daytime timetable below and tell me you completely understand it at first glance.
Having studied it for some considerable time I worked out in school term times (marked 1) the 510 leaves Harlow at 00, 24 and 48 past the odd hour and 12, 36 past the even hour with the 509 alternating and doing the opposite (12 and 36 past the odd hour and 00, 24 and 48 part the even hour) while in school holidays the frequency drops to every 15 minutes with the 509 and 510 alternating at 00 and 30 (509) and 15 and 45 (510). That’ll surely generate passengers attracted by the simplicity of it all. Not.
Even more confusing, at Stansted Airport I noticed the departure listing at the bus stand clarified that it’s the school term and holiday dates in Hertfordshire you need to know despite both Harlow and Stansted Airport being in Essex. That’s because Sawbridgeworth and Bishops Stortford are in Hertfordshire, of course.
At least there’s a QR code to scan which takes you to Hertfordshire County Council’s website. How thoughtful. The things you have to work out to catch a bus. Unbelievable.
Back to the 723 and you may just be able to make out, from the aqua-blue faded print on the timetable shown earlier, the new 723 runs hourly from Harlow on Mondays to Saturdays from 05:20 to 19:20 with journeys also at 03:20, 21:20 and 23:20 taking two buses for the bulk of the day with just one bus providing a two hourly service throughout Sunday. Return times from Stansted Airport are to a similar pattern.
Right, having established all of that how did the new route make out yesterday, its first weekday.
The route taken is as direct as you can get it with nine bus stops between Harlow and the M11 and four between the M11 and Stansted Airport, the latter all within the environs of the airport’s influence.
It was good to see information and departure times had been updated in Harlow’s temporary bus station…
… although goodness knows what passengers make of the combined mess of a school term and school holiday listing…
… and weirdly although the electronic display was showing the new times for the 509/510 as well as the new 723 it was also still showing withdrawn departures on route 508.
I caught the 11:20 723 from Harlow with seven other passengers boarding.
We left at 11:23 with one passenger alighting and another boarding as we headed out of Harlow towards the M11 with everyone then on board travelling to Stansted Airport. It took 12 minutes to reach the M11, then seven minutes to the next exit for Stansted Airport and then eight minutes to reach the Airport bus station arriving spot on time at 11:50 with an impressive 27 minutes journey time.
The return journey at 12:20 left with only one passenger and three more boarding as we left the airport environs, just before the M11. That journey took dead on 30 minutes. A 509 or 510 is scheduled to deaprt at 22 minutes past the hour so the combined departure stand for both routes in the airport bus station necessitates the 723 leaving from an adjacent stand as shown above. We passed the second bus on the 723 on the M11 on both journeys and each time there were around four or five on board.
It was noticeable at both termini how busy buses on the 509/510 were despite the new 723 creaming off end-to-end passengers.
It will be interesting to see if segregating the market to give airport travellers a much quicker journey will generate more passengers as awareness grows of what’s now on offer.
I’m guessing a lot of airport employees live in Harlow and the 723 will give a much more attractive end to end journey time than the 509/510 have ever done.
And now for the second of today’s mini blogs…
An eight mile diversion
Blog reader Jordan contacted me to let me know about disruption impacting passengers using the Croydon Tram during the current closure.
It sounded something worth investigating, especially reading Jordan’s description of a passenger he came across trying to return from Addington Village Interchange to Gravel Hill (a distance of less than half a mile) having to make an 8.5 mile diversionary journey via West Wickham, Shirley and Croydon.
The two week closure is east of East Croydon necessitated by lengthy engineering works at the Sandilands tram stop impacting all three ‘lines’ to Beckenham Junction, Elmers End and New Addington…
… along with major works on the section of track approaching Addington Village Interchange…
… which also involved closing the westbound carriageway of the busy A2022, Kent Gate Way.
It’s this road closure that’s added to the complication of providing a tram replacement bus service as that (along with some local bus routes) has also had to follow a lengthy diversion for Croydon bound journeys as shown on the map below.
Arriva are providing two replacement bus services – a T2 to Beckenham Junction and Elmers End…
…and a T3 to New Addington.
I made a journey on the latter last Friday which outbound to New Addington was relatively straight forward taking just 22 minutes from East Croydon station to the New Addington tram stop which wasn’t bad considering the tram is scheduled to take 20 minutes.
We missed out the stops immediately east of East Croydon (Lebanon Road and Sandilands) as they were being served by the T2 and picked up three passengers along the way (one from each of the stops at Lloyd Park, Coombe Lane and Gravel Hill).
Returning back from New Addington there was quite a crowd waiting for the next bus at the stop without a tram replacement sign…
…with a gap of at least 15 minutes since the previous bus had left…
… and when we got to Addington Village Interchange we then had to head off eastwards instead of westwards due to the road closure and follow the lengthy diversion. It took 37 minutes – but that was late morning on a Friday, I can imagine it must take much longer during late afternoon.
I asked the high-viz wearing staff at East Croydon about a westbound service from Gravel Hill, Coombe Lane and Lloyd Park and they confirmed as far as they were aware there wasn’t one suggesting passengers had to travel the other way via Addington Village Interchange and change there to a Croydon bound bus and then change again back at East Croydon to a New Addington bound bus.
Quite an adventure. Thank goodness the works end tomorrow Wednesday).
Roger French
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS
BusAndTrainUser 
Being involved with Harlow and Stansted’s bus and coach services, both commercial and supported some 11 years ago and the introduction of the original 509/510 services between Stansted and Harlow on a round the clock pattern to assist airport workers and generally people wishing to travel to and from the airport, these changes seem challenging following Roger’s description of the service information available does Arriva never learn. Bus and Coach services information MUST be available in all formats to ensure the travelling public in general are able to understand how to use the services.
This also applies to the long established 724 service between Harlow and Heathrow Airport, poorly marketed in livery and vehicle standard today compared with the Greenline offering 12 years ago which was always the cream of Arriva’s Harlow depot fleet.
As for Croydon’s Tramlink services I can’t comment.
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The 24 mins frequency on the 509/510 (schooldays only of course) is fairly bizarre and doesn’t give a nice easy to remember clockface frequency.
Way back before the introduction of the 508, the 509/510 were of course every 30 mins and combined every 15 mins. Maybe it would have been better to go back to this rather than what we have now.
I would guess there is some form of funding from Stansted Airport for the service, but nonetheless good to see a new Arriva service with some marketing to it even if the website is it’s usual user friendly self!
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The 509 service timetable is bizarre. Why separate school and non school times 24/7 I have not a clue. Even more confusing is Essex and Herts have different school holidays so which one they refer to who knows
The only place I have found the 723 is on bus times ,org but it is not tracking correctly on it. Even Interlink does not list it
I think they tries a Greenline service to Stansted before and that did not work
Given there is a fast an frequent train service from Harlow to Stansted so I think the 723 will struggle
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The 723 does not appear on the Intalink website, at it is entirely within Essex not Hertfordshire.
Whilst there are indeed frequent trains between Harlow and Stansted Airport, the railway station in Harlow is a 15-minute walk or a bus ride away from the town centre. The train fare is also more than £7 for a single (both off-peak and ‘anytime’).
Dan Tancock
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It’s standard Arriva practice nationwide for some reason, as is the messy timetable with the superscript 1 and 2 codes next to the times rather than using the industry standard letter codes Sch and NSch.
Mind you, I notice that Stagecoach also don’t use the industry standard codes correctly, using MF to mean “Monday to Friday” when by standard it means “Monday and Friday only”. Monday to Friday should be shown as M-F (with the dash meaning “to”); perhaps Stagecoach don’t understand punctuation.
That leads me onto another rant: when did “between … to” become a thing? I was always taught to use “between … and” or “from … to” but neverf “between … to”.
OK, I’ll fall off my hobbyhorse now!
ANM
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I bet a bus journey from addington interchange to forestdale takes quite a while then!
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TfL proposing to change route of 310
They are proposing that it runs as now between Golders Green and Archway but then goes down the Holloway road to Nags Head area and then to Finsbury Park where it rejoins the current route
Quite why they are alerting it who knows . I should imagine the Archway to Finsbury park section on the current route is not that busy but I doubt going down the Holloway road will improve things
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Does the new routeing avoid the low bridge so that double deckers could operate it?
MotCO
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The “information” from Arriva suffers from also-itis and add-itis:
“In addition, we are also making changes”; “There will also be 2 additional stops added”; “Also, additional stops added”
and there are several pseudo-sentences (ie they don’t bother with verbs).
Ian McNeil
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As ever, planned by people who never use buses themselves! Anyone who does, would know buses are busier during the day than when scholars are in school!
I suspect the rationale behind it is saving staff, understandable as the bus industry doesn’t get the huge sums of cash to employ large numbers now seen at most staffed stations, seemingly very busy looking at their phones.
It possibly helps granting leave to those Drivers with children, but the mess in presenting the times to the public, as described, is simply ridiculous and should be as two separate timetables. Understand that would present difficulties too, but nothing as bad as now.
Terence Uden
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Trying to understand the hate for station staff here. Name the roles you think are unnecessary. They tried reform of ticket offices etc but it was blocked so it will be a while before anything like that is tried again…
Daniel
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509/510/723 Both the counties are good at providing the information. Essex as Essextravel had them on its forthcoming bus service changes and Hertfordshire as Intalink had the 508/509/510 change too (the 723 does not serve Hertfordshire). The new timetables are on their websites in sensible formats. Counties supporting bus well.
Arriva’s website is appalling but setting a location first seems to help. However in this case Arriva hasn’t recorded the change or a notice about it.
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The normal information displays on the tram replacement buses are not exactly stellar, starting off with their displays showing “Rail Replacement”, which they’re not, and no route number. Surely for a disruption of this length something better could have been done?
As for the replacement displays, having them on the nearside of the windscreen would make them more passenger friendly, and what do the “3” and the “210” (the most prominent display) mean?
Not a good show.
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I’ve visited Stansted twice recently, and the big screens intended (presumably) for next bus information were blank; with no posters available, it was necessary to wander ip and down to locate the stop for my next bus. Pretty poor for an international airport!!!
I believe that Arriva Kent Thameside are responsible for Harlow Garage …. so I’m not surprised at the awful timetable information … they do have form here.
My bigger concern is that Martijn Gilbert has been in post at Arriva for around 6 months now. It rather seems that the monolith is proving difficult to turn around …. I would’ve hoped that some improvements would have been evident by now … this new scheme could’ve been used for a new launch of better, more passenger focused information.
Oh well …. I’ll not hold my breath ….
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forestdale accessible via Selsdon thankfully. A tram replacement from Shirley via Gravel Hill Roundabout to Sanderstead Station may gave been better
JBC Prestatyn
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with new Addington i think there is scope for a superloop express. Beyond the tramstop is the shopping area then an industrial estate. Making the old X68 daily evey 20 mins industrial estate shops Addingham interchange sandillands East Croydon West Croydon Norwood thence as cutternt to Waterloo Holborn Euston
JBC Prestatyn
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On another recent Tramlink closure, Route 466 was sent on diversion along the A212 to cover for the missing tram service. As to the A212, I Can heartily recommend a visit to the spacious Coombe Lodge, Croydon’s latest JDW. It was enjoyable sitting in the conservatory but the choice of rooms is impressive. Again, as to the A212, before Tramlink, there were Metrobus Routes 353 & 357 reaching Croydon using this road.
I take it ENCTS is OK on new Route 723, the number reminding me of secondary-school days using Weekender tickets. One weekend with a schoolfriend as company he introduced me to “family” in Rainham one Sunday. We reached there, from Surrey, via Route 65 to Richmond; District Line to Elm Park and then Route 165. I knew my friend had a Green Line map as I had almost certainly seen his copy, yet he thought we would get home to Surrey the way we got to Rainham. I was hell bent on bagging a Grays Garage RMC! The damned thing was ten late and I was on the brink of returning home via Elm Park Station. We both enjoyed our ride on Route 723 all the way to Aldgate. The conductor was probably narked having two children aboard who rushed up the stairs for him to come after us, only to be shown two Weekender tickets.
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It seems mad that Kent Gate Way was completely closed in one direction, and that they couldn’t set up a contraflow on the other carriageway to allow it to be used by two-way traffic, given the lack of alternative routes. Instead, buses from New Addington on the 64 took a half hour diversion via West Wickham and Shirley to get to the other end of the half mile closure. I wonder how many people chose to walk instead!
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I thought the 64 was withdrawn between Gravel Hill and New Addington this time round.
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I was interested to see that the 509, on its way from Stanstead Airport to Bishop’s Stortford, now calls at Heath Row – not the airport, but a bus stop serving a small lane NW of Bishop’s Stortford centre. I wonder if that has confused strangers arriving at the airport…
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