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... Continue Reading →
Thursday 4th December 2025 Like many towns and cities, London is plagued with roadworks often necessitating road closures and consequent diversion and disruption to bus routes. BBC London contacted last week inviting me to take a look with them at the impact of the current closure of Delancey Street in the heart of Camden Town.... Continue Reading →
Thursday 9th October 2025 The two words "at last" have become all too familiar in a heading when it comes to blogging about new trains entering service in Britain, and these latest CAF built trains for London's DLR network are no different. The first of the 54 trains was unveiled to the media by Mayor... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 7th October 2025 Both TfL and Brighton & Hove Bus Company introduced a new high profile express bus route last week. It was interesting to take a ride on both to compare and contrast. TfL's much hyped route BL1 began on Saturday 27th September providing a quicker alternative for passengers travelling by bus between... Continue Reading →
Friday 29th August 2025 Welcome to a Friday bonus BusAndTrainUser Verify blog special checking out unbelievable incompetence in the Romford area this week. The much respected and popular Diamond Geezer (DG) blog first exposed the lunacy on Wednesday. It’s not that I don’t believe his description of how awful TfL has acted - DG’s blog... Continue Reading →
Saturday 5th July 2025 As TfL's Superloop brand becomes ever more nonsensical with more routes planned that are questionably 'super' and are certainly nothing about being part of a 'loop', I took a ride on one of the longest standing and original non-loop routes to be added to the brand - the SL6, renumbered from... Continue Reading →
Saturday 7th June 2025 TfL are introducing another cut to its beleaguered central London bus later this month involving a diversion to route 205 which currently links Bow, Mile End, Whitechapel and Aldgate with Liverpool Street, Kings Cross, St Pancras, Euston, Marylebone and Paddington stations as well as St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. From a date... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 6th May 2025 It’s always heartening to see another small enterprising bus operator launch a brand new commercial bus route to tap into an unmet market. Black Cat Travel began a new six return journeys a day, six days a week route between Lincoln and Retford on Saturday before last, so I took a... Continue Reading →
Saturday 12th April 2025 After Windsor and Northumberland I'm in south west London for this month's featured bus route I've ranked eighth in Britain's Top 10 Quirky Bus Routes. It's a TfL contracted route, operated by Transport UK (formerly Abelllio), running from Whitton via Richmond, Mortlake and Barnes to Roehampton. Some readers might be puzzling... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 8th April 2025 Welcome to the brand new cross-River Silvertown Tunnel linking North Greenwich with Leamouth and Docklands with the aim of relieving congestion in the nearby Blackwall Tunnel. It opened yesterday, on time and on budget (£2.2 billion). The 0.9 mile tunnel includes a lane dedicated to buses and lorries and sees one... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Answer: Both places saw a bus route denoted by the letter R withdrawn over the weekend. In TfL's continuing drive for efficiencies to save a few vehicles here and there (it all helps with Superloop expansion), from Saturday, it rerouted the already circuitous half-hourly route B14 (Bexleyheath-Sidcup-St Mary Cray-Orpington) to take... Continue Reading →
Thursday 20th February 2025 Hello A new bus station opened in Gosport last October and I finally got round to paying a visit last Friday to take a look. It's been built alongside the old site which, after 52 years, had definitely seen better days, and, like its predecessor, is conveniently located next to the... Continue Reading →
Saturday 1st February 2025 Photo courtesy Inside Croydon Bus shelters in Croydon have been in the news again this week with online media reporting TfL is to "install, maintain and clean new bus shelters across more than 100 locations”. In fact 114 brand new shelters are destined for the Borough. Why the big news story?... Continue Reading →
Thursday 12th December 2024 1. Another connecting bus that doesn't connect Residents in the village of Downe just inside the Greater London boundary with Kent have had their usual seamless bus journey into Bromley disrupted these past few weeks due to Southern Gas Networks closing Rockery Road; the main access road from Keston, used by... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 10th December 2024 It's been a bumper year for bus station rebuilds and Transport Hubs. Already featured in blogs this year have been Belfast, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Crewe, Durham, Halifax, Inverness and Stockport and just in the last few weeks there's been two more - Kingston-upon-Thames and Porthcawl with another 'frozen-in-time' rebuild in Porth. So... Continue Reading →
Saturday 23rd November 2024 Passengers on TfL’s route 358 between Crystal Palace and Orpington finally got to travel on the much anticipated Irizar electric ‘tram style’ buses on Wednesday when seven of the 17 vehicles allocated to the route, operated by Go-Ahead London from its Green Street Green bus garage, hit the road. Readers may... Continue Reading →
Thursday 21st November 2024 Earlier this month media outlets in London and Surrey ran a story about an "isolated Surrey village" "urgently needing" a bus service. The village is Netherne-on-the-Hill. I'd never heard of it so decided to investigate and verify claims elderly residents may be "forced to leave" for the lack of a bus.... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 A ride on route 310 I finally managed to take a ride on TfL's recently introduced route 310 which provides a direct link between the two Jewish communities in Golders Green and Stamford Hill, removing the need for a bus change in Finsbury Park between parallel routes 210 and 253/254 as... Continue Reading →
Sunday 1st September 2024 It wasn’t that long ago (2021-2023) TfL’s bus route planning department was all about frequency cuts and service withdrawals. Justification for cutting long standing routes habitually quoted the Hopper Fare allowing passengers to “seamlessly” change buses without incurring a fare penalty when their direct journey was no longer possible. This period,... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 16h June 2024 TfL introduced the final route change in its Central London Bus Review at the end of last month - the extensive proposals launched and consulted on during the summer of 2022. It never pays to rush these things. The delayed change involves route 211 which had operated between Hammersmith and Waterloo... Continue Reading →
Thursday 6th June 2024 Readers will recall Tuesday's blog saw us ending Part 1 of our round London Superloop odyssey beginning at East Croydon having only reached as far as Finchley Central rather than the planned Walthamstow Central. Thanks to light rain conditions, unimpressive aged vehicles on the SL7 to Heathrow, slow going through Northolt... Continue Reading →
Saturday 27th April 2024 We're now a third of the way through this fortnightly series featuring all of Britain's bus routes numbered 100 and having been to Stevenage, Crawley, Lincoln, Glasgow, Campbeltown, Guildford and Manchester I thought it was time to head to London and take a ride on TfL’s route 100. It’s odd to... Continue Reading →
Saturday 20th April 2024 The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) are at pains to point out on its website how its statistics on rail station usage can only be estimates: "as Great Britain does not have a fully gated rail network, a complete recording of passenger flows through stations is not possible, so some... Continue Reading →
Saturday 9th March 2024 Contextual Alert: The following blog was written prior to Lambeth Borough Council's dramatic decision on Thursday afternoon to suspend the Streatham Wells Low Traffic Neighbourhood with immediate effect. Teaser Alert: I paid a return visit to Streatham yesterday afteroon to see what impact this suspension was having. Read on for the... Continue Reading →
Sunday 25th February 2024 It's the London Borough of Bexley's residents’ turn to enjoy the delights of TfL's Superloop limited stop 'express' buses now traversing their home patch. New route SL3 began yesterday linking Bromley, Sidcup and Bexleyheath with Thamesmead (just over the border in the Borough of Greenwich). It brings the metaphorical clockface Superloop... Continue Reading →
Saturday 10th February 2024 A quirky TfL bus route has started running on the southern fringe of its operating area. It's not often you come across a 16 seat minibus on a TfL bus route. The 464 Connector is being run by Swanley based Go Coach Hire, famous for running bus routes in the Sevenoaks... Continue Reading →
Thursday 8th February 2024 BBC London News carried an all too familiar negative bus story at the end of last month featuring one of its own journalists (Paul Moss) alleging buses on his local TfL route 18, despite not being full, are not stopping at a bus stop in Kensal Town leaving passengers frustrated. Apparently... Continue Reading →
Sunday 4th February 2024 The latest segment of TfL's Superloop network launched yesterday. Route SL5 is the shortest section of the loop-round-London-that-isn't-really-a-loop, lying roughly between five o'clock and six o'clock on a clock face analogy. In geographic terms that's from Bromley to Croydon. It has the fewest number of bus stops of the Superloop network... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 12th December 2023 I knew there might be challenging peak hour traffic conditions on the North Circular Road on a Monday morning…….but never expected it to be as bad as it turned out yesterday. If TfL knew about the disruptive utility roadworks on the North Circular Road near Colney Hatch Lane (and presumably someone... Continue Reading →
Sunday 10th December 2023 Yesterday saw TfL introduce the Superloop route that heads up its new SL number sequence. Route SL1 covers the northern arc taking over where route SL10 ends in North Finchley thereby extending the loop via Arnos Grove, Palmers Green and Edmonton to Walthamstow, terminating in the bus station by Walthamstow Central... Continue Reading →
Thursday 7th December 2023 By the 1820s the River Thames at Rotherhithe was so congested it had become the M25 of its day. The nearest river crossing for merchants and citizens was London Bridge but that was over two miles away as well as being busy and expensive to use. It's said the river was... Continue Reading →
Sunday 26th November 2023 We’ve had the SL6. SL7, SL8 and SL9 but they were just aperitifs and starters, being reheated routes X68, X26, 607 and X140, and two of them aren’t even part of a loop so shouldn’t even have been on the menu. But now comes the main course in the form of... Continue Reading →
Thursday 19th October 2023 In last Thursday's blog about the upcoming demise of the Day Travelcard in London I added the caveat to my analysis of how the new regime come January would impact passengers, TfL and Train Operating Companies (TOCs) that I "may have got all my assumptions wrong including what Apportionment Factors are... Continue Reading →
Thursday 12th October 2023 This blog is a collaboration with my friend Geoff Marshall and his highly respected and much watched YouTube channel. We teamed up last week to test out what will happen in January when time runs out for London’s popular one-day Travelcard. Click here to see Geoff’s video setting out our findings... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
15th July 2023 It's a true 'rags to riches' story. What at one time were run down unloved, and in some cases unknown, obscure railway lines skirting around London's suburbs with ageing, unreliable rolling stock serving uncared for stations susceptible to vandalism and graffiti, have been transformed into an attractive cohesive "joined up" (literally) railway... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 11th July 2023 OK, let's clear one thing up from the start. Walthamstow is NOT a village and no amount of village-washing and slick branding is going to change that. It's a busy suburb of north east London in the London Borough of Waltham Forest served by the Victoria Line, two Overground lines and... Continue Reading →
Sunday 21st May 2023 Readers nay recall a gloom laden blog I posted back in January 2022 warning that London Mayor Sadiq Khan was drawing up proposals to end Day Travelcards as part of funding negotiations at that time for continued financial support from Government. Sure enough, 16 months later on 18th April, TfL launched... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 29th March 2023 An unscheduled Wednesday Blog Special Mayor Sadiq Khan was out headline grabbing yesterday launching his idea for a Superloop network of limited stop express style bus routes encircling outer London. The vision is for an Overground-come-M25 bus network and is being promoted now to stymie criticism the Mayor isn't doing enough... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 7th March 2023 TfL's Press Office was busy yesterday proclaiming"further new proposals for more than 400,000km increase in buses services in outer London to strengthen alternatives to private cars and maximise benefits of ULEZ". And if you think the grammar doesn't quite sound right in that sentence, don't blame my usual sloppy fat finger... Continue Reading →
Thursday 2nd March 2023 I blogged about the £655 million capacity upgrade to Bank Underground station in January 2022 when the Northern Line Bank branch closed for five months to enable the new southbound tunnel and platform to be completed and opened. Since then contractors have been beavering away on all the other enhancements including... Continue Reading →
Thursday 2nd February 2023 It’s been a long time coming, as these things always are at TfL. Having launched a consultation proposing the withdrawal of route 271 and associated changes to routes 21, 141, 143, and 263 as long ago as November 2021, the end is finally here. Tomorrow is the last day to enjoy... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 27th December 2022 Another month; another potpourri of miscellany. Another great Ensignbus running day A big shout out to the Newman family (Peter, Steve and Ross) for organising another great running day based on Lakeside at the beginning of the month. It's proving to be one of the most popular events of its kind... Continue Reading →
Thursday 22nd December 2022 Four new unusual bus routes started running in north London this week. That’s the introductory paragraph I optimistically wrote as I left home yesterday morning to try them out. Spoiler alert: one never ran; one had such a long gap in service I gave up waiting; one was extensively disrupted by... Continue Reading →
Saturday 3rd December 2022 And so to the third and final of my palindromic anagram London bus route riding trilogy. Having enjoyed the 123/321 and 132/231 it can only be the turn of routes 213 and 312 thus completing the only six route palindromic anagram possible on TfL's bus network. So far I’ve not had... Continue Reading →
Thursday 24th November 2022 After all the hoo-ha in the summer over TfL's proposed severe cuts to central London’s bus routes reflecting its target to reduce mileage by 4%, better match service provision with reduced numbers travelling, simplify the network and reflect strains on TfL's struggling finances, it was announced yesterday almost all the proposals... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Having seen Irizar’s new ‘ie tram’ bus displayed at the EuroBus EXPO show earlier this month I thought I’d take a ride on Go-Ahead London’s route 358, where the buses are destined to enter service early next year, to see how they’re likely to perform on this busy route. It’s a... Continue Reading →
Thursday 17th November 2022 After my two palindrome rides on London's bus routes 123 and 321 last month, it seemed a good idea to repeat the adventure and do an anagram variant with a journey on both routes 132 and 231, not least because it made sense to ride the 132 after finishing my journey... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 25th October 2022 A new National Rail station opened for business yesterday as the TfL run Elizabeth line finally welcomed Bond Street to the network. It was only three years and ten months later than originally expected from the "Crossrail is on time and on budget" fantasy world of the previous management. That was... Continue Reading →
Sunday 23rd October 2022 I had the pleasure of jointly hosting another Young Bus Managers’ Conference last week with Martijn Gilbert. Held in Sheffield it was another inspirational event over brimming with energy and enthusiasm emanating from around 60 keen young people from whom I’m sure senior industry leaders will emerge in the future, bringing... Continue Reading →
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