Thursday 5th November 2026
Arriva has introduced a new bus route linking Southend’s town centre with the city’s Airport. Routes 62A/B began last week, on Sunday 25th October, running half hourly between 05:45 and 20:37 on Mondays to Fridays with an 06:45-19:37 span on Saturdays and 08:45-18:37 on Sundays. As well as the Airport the route restores a service in the North Avenue and Hamstel Road area of of the city lost when a route was withdrawn more than three years ago.
Funded by Southend City’s Local Authority Bus Grant, it’s the second route to be introduced to the Airport in the last year as readers may recall I reviewed Stephensons new 23A/B route linking Leigh-on-Sea with the Airport last September, a route also being funded by the city council.
Like that route, the new 62A has a peak time variant (numbered 62B) and this one does a loop around Temple Farm Industrial Estate as shown on the map below.
Two eight year old ADL Enviro200 buses have have been branded in the new yellow and blue Southend City livery first given a public outing in June on Arriva’s new route 1X between Canvey Island and Southend.
I asked renowned expert
I took a ride on this latest new addition to Southend bus network on Monday morning, it’s second week, to see how many passengers are taking advantage of the new link to the Airport.
I was impressed to see posters in Southend’s Travel Centre have been updated with references to the new routes added…
… although the plan of the Airport itself hadn’t been updated, nor did it show the 23A/B to/from Leigh-on-Sea.
It also took me a while to find departure stand Y at the Travel Centre from where the 62A leaves as it didn’t seem to fit in any logical order of the lettered layout for the stands. I ended up asking an Arriva driver, who didn’t know either, but on telling him I was heading to the airport, he then knew where the new route departed so my wanderings came to a successful end. Perhaps a diagram showing the layout of the Travel Centre might be a useful addition, especially for non regulars wanting to travel to the airport?
The stand letters aren’t displayed very prominently.
The bus for the 11:45 departure arrived from its incoming journey at on time at 11:37 with five passengers alighting.
The driver wasn’t one of Arriva’s finest, resolutely keeping the doors closed making passengers wait outside while he enjoyed some scrolling on his phone for the eight minutes stand time. I also overhead a passenger enquire whether the new route served Wellesley Hospital only to be told he didn’t know (it does).
We left on time with another five passengers on board but these all alighted along Central Avenue, not long into the journey, however before that we had to do a double run past Southend Victoria station while major works are taking place to fill in the former 1960s Queensway Underpass preventing a right turn into London Road, as can be seen in the map below.
After that it was just myself on board until one more passenger joined us at Priory Crescent for the short journey to the Airport where he and I alighted at the terminus bus stop immediately opposite the airport’s Terminal Building and adjacent control tower.
It was good to see a supply of printed timetable leaflets on the bus…
… which I noticed passengers picked up a copy as they alighted…
… and at the terminus bus stop at the airport two displays show the route map and timetable…
… but I also noticed an empty case didn’t contain any information about the 23A/23B.
On the other hand it was noteworthy Google maps hadn’t yet caught up with the 62A/B’s introduction but did know all about the 23A/B.
I was intrigued to know whether this new route had replaced another route within the city or whether it was completely new, including the area served along Central Avenue where the five passengers had alighted, so asked renowned Essex bus expert, Richard Delahoy, if he could help with the background.
Richard kindly explained the detailed background to, and his thoughts on, the route….
“It picks up on a number of separate issues/needs …..
– to the east of Southend, in Southchurch: there is very dense long-standing housing along North and Central Avenues (which run east-west and are one way streets, in opposite directions) and the streets connecting them. The area is served on the edges by existing routes (Arriva 2 and 29 principally, plus Stephensons 24). However, passenger numbers along the Central/North Avenue corridor were in steady decline (despite it being what ought to be good bus territory) and Stephensons rerouted the buses a different way into Southend, leaving Central/North Avenues unserved. A call from residents/councillors to reinstate the service on North/Central Avenues initially saw Southend Council arrange for Stephensons to provide a very limited service of five circular trips between school peaks M-F but that was next to useless. It was numbered 62. Now with BSIP money, the Council has reinstated a half-hourly service, daily. It’s thought that the Stephensons 62 will now be withdrawn but I’ve seen nothing yet to confirm that.
– there is a large Waitrose store on the north side of Southend (along with a very big B&Q, some other retail outlets and a private hospital, the Wellesley). Early attempts by Stephensons to provide a commercial service to Waitrose in the 1990s failed, but when B&Q opened, there was a S106 requirement for a 7 day a week service linked to the store hours. Stephensons provided this as route 61 which started in July 2007 and provided a direct link into Southend via Bournemouth Park Road, which had not been served directly since deregulation. I had also routed it to serve Southend’s main cemetery and crematorium, which otherwise only had a very limited service on the Southend-Rochford-Canewdon-Wallasea/Paglesham service 60. Despite being a very reliable service, the 61 failed to attract enough passengers and when the 10-year S106 agreement expired, it was reduced to a very limited between school peaks M-F service only. Hence the new 62A/B have a short dog-leg double run to take in Waitrose and the Wellesley Hospital.
– the Temple Farm Industrial Estate on the north side of Southend is already served by Stephensons aforementioned 60 to/from Canewdon etc on a direct route from central Southend, but peak M-F 62As are given a double run off the main route to loop round the industrial estate to supplement the 60 and provide links from Southchurch. In practice, traffic congestion there is playing havoc with the timetable, for relatively little benefit in my opinion.
– there have long been calls for radial routes across Southend that avoid the city centre. The 62A/B routing via Eastern Avenue and Priory Crescent on its way to the airport provides a small, limited answer to that. Until a couple of decades ago it was served by the 21, the only route that went in an arc round the town without touching the city centre but that was altered to run more directly into the centre. This radial route also serves the local Farm Foods store and one of the Aldis in the town (both of which are probably more likely to attract Southchurch residents rather than Waitrose, if that doesn’t sound too snobby!) and the local hospice
– the Airport. After a period of little or no commercial flights, Southend (“London Southend Airport”) has been rejuvenated with a new terminal building and rail station, both built by Stobarts when they were the owner/long term lessee. EastJet now have a base here. Arriva services 7/8/9 all pass by the end of the airport approach road but don’t go right up to the terminal building which is a 500m metre walk from the nearest bus stops. Not exactly an excessive walk, however First’s X30 (Southend-Chelmsford-Stansted Airport) used to go right into the airport to stop outside the terminal building but from my observations carried very few to/from there. They then altered it to stop outside (like Arriva 9) but in more recent times have diverted all the service, except for a couple of middle of the night journeys, away from the airport to serve Southend Hospital instead (part of their way of being able to withdraw the Southend to Hullbridge service 20 to cut the overall pvr).”
Having arrived at the Airport I decided to spend a little time in the Terminal Building before catching the following 62A back to Southend (half an hour later), but unfortunately this must have encountered a problem as when I checked the tracking when it was due to depart, bustimes.org was showing it running 29 minutes late which was clearly of no use as it would have been on the timing of the other bus (which wasn’t tracking, but was definitely running as I’d travelled on it).
I abandoned that idea and caught a train from the adjacent Southern Airport station instead.
Interestingly the Airport Terminal building itself was like a morgue. Almost completely empty…
… which isn’t surprising when looking at the small number of flights that depart.
Richard concluded his briefing …. “I don’t see either the 23A or 62A/B carrying many people to/from the airport. There may be a handful of local people who work there and could use the bus regularly, but the bus times probably don’t suit work patterns, for early starts and late finishes, so I don’t see that attracting many passengers. People travelling to the airport from further afield are much more likely to use the train direct to the airport, on the Liverpool St-Southend Victoria line. And how frequently do local people who live along the routes take flights from the airport? Clearly nowhere near enough to make either route a sustainable commercial proposition when the BSIP money runs out, as it inevitably will at some stage. Still, the local politicians can claim all the credit for providing frequent airport links.”
I share Richard’s cynicism and when I told him about the late running of the second bus he commented … “early days suggest reliability will be an issue, it is pretty tightly timed and there is regular serious congestion at Cuckoo Corner (the junction of Priory Crescent/A127/Manners Way) which I know only too well, as it is one of my only routes out of Southend by car. At one point last week the buses were 30 minutes apart as planned but only because both were running half an hour late!”
I wish route 62A/B well, but sadly don’t think it’ll become a long term fixture of the city’s bus network. It’s nice to see the City Council giving it a try though, while they have the funding.
My grateful thanks to Richard for all his help.
Roger French
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS
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