London buses - are we worse off?

[bushopper]

NC for this as transport related issues seem to get everyone agitated these days.

Do you think we are worse off with all the redesign and rationalisation of the bus network in London?

For instance, one used to be able to use the 11 bus to get from Fulham Broadway to Liverpool Street on a single £1.75 ticket. No need to change.

Now, to cover the same route, you would most likely need to take 3 buses, and even if you tried to access the 'one-hour' hopper fare, it's unlikely you could as the traffic makes it virtually impossible to cover the whole route in one hour.

Also those with walking difficulties or unwell usually suffer as connecting bus stops can sometimes be 100 metres or more away

In winter, bad weather or when carrying shopping or luggage it can be a nightmare too.

What has been the point of it all?

I know what you mean, bushopper. They've just changed a route that runs near where I live. Originally, it went to Oxford Street, then the route was truncated to Trafalgar Square, and then only as far as Whitehall. Now that bus has been rerouted to Victoria, which another bus service that is local to me already goes to, along with the train and the nearest tube. There have been other changes to local routes over the years, but that has been the most useless from a passenger point of view. The number of endpoints are shrinking. Now you have to make a number of changes to get where you want, so the journey time and sometimes the cost goes up.

What is annoying is cutting routes at the same time as extending the low emissions zone. Utter madness.

Yes. It starts to look like profiteering.

This is what low traffic zones feel like to people across the UK btw. That's not a good thing. Where I live now, a 5 minute walk from a major A road into the city, buses run every half hour and thanks to the miracle of privatisation that actually means three buses all from different companies (so there's no point buying a season ticket) tumbling on top of each other every half hour.

It's two quid each way per person for now (previously was a fiver which is just taking the piss) which obviously isn't even all that cheap for a couple of miles' travel (given the relative inconvenience) if there's three or more of you, but god forbid if you actually want to get into town and take less than an hour to make that journey so decide to get in the car - there's bollards, street furniture, roads "reclaimed" for "pedestrians" - which ime in a city quickly become places with no eyes on where one can openly deal whatever one pleases - and all sorts of shit that make life more unpleasant while at the same time no effort goes into actual pleasant easy to use, reliable and affordable public transport provision. It's all stick and no carrot.

Exactly try getting a bus that is supposed to run once and hour on a Sunday or every 30min during the week when they either don't turn up or drive straight passed.

London worries 🤣

OP the point of the rationalisation is to save money (obviously).
If TFL cannot cut operating costs then the price goes up for everyone.
It is very sad when some people with mobility issues have their local bus cut and struggle to walk to the next nearest service - this can often be their lifeline to independence. For everyone else, suck up the changes and appreciate how good it is still - there were enormous numbers of overlapping routes and half empty buses in the daytime clogging up central London unnecessarily.

More traffic means longer routes which means that drivers are more likely to legally have to take a break in the middle of a journey. TfL then needs to get a driver to that bus to continue the journey or the bus will have to remain there for 30mins. I suspect they shortened the route for this reason-they would also have been losing money and/or services getting drivers out to these buses. Drivers cannot be in two places at once driving their own route and relieving someone else.

Another Tory wonder then

Bus services in London are much better even after the changes than anywhere in the country. Especially the level of evening and weekend services. I'd say either Edinburgh, Oxford or Brighton of places I have experienced might come in second place.

The government probably has forced service cuts on the London Mayor and TfL, which I doubt would have happened if a Conservative Mayor was in place.

I'm in London and my workplace is 8 miles away and takes about an hour on public transport. That's an average commute here. With the huge numbers of people here, reliable public transport links are essential. It isn't really comparable to life in smaller towns and cities.

I think there's a rule that a 'local' bus route can't be over a certain distance/time.

Some years ago the bus route that circled the outskirts of our city was cut due to this. It was split into two halves and renumbered, I think. Can't remember the exact details as I don't use buses that often due to aforementioned unreliability, infrequency and expense outside the capital.

Campaign for what you want in your own area.

People in London are allowed to discuss transport in London without basically being told to shut up.

A massive capital city, with the population ten time over some of their other cities in the uk, has a large transport infrastructure? What a shock.

I think you’re probably just in a minority OP. I would never get a bus for 2 hours if there was another choice and likely lots of other people feel the same.

But surely people still need to get to work there?

We are lucky in London. Where I live, I have three tube stops within reasonable walking distance, and buses every 2-4 minutes (on the sign that shows the next ten buses, the tenth is never more than about 28 mins’ wait). Very fortunate.

I think they could cut half of our buses and give the money to the rest of the country.

Sorry meant to reply to @octoberafternoons

its a nightmare in other parts of the country, we are SO lucky with the bus service we have. Services get cut due to cost effectiveness and efficiency don’t they, so that long route you describe was not be sufficiently well used to justify one bus route. Just look at the state of our train system and tell me that privatisation of public transport helps passengers.

First bus from where I live to where I work goes at 9.30am, needless to say i drive. Here buses are only run for the benefit of vocal pensioners, useless for working people

I think what gets to me is that there's so much emphasis in getting everyone to use public transport while it's being reduced and made more and more inconvenient

It doesn’t make sense at all and is a Tory funding issue.

Just get the tube. Problem solved.

@Larner, I was in London from 1980 and don't particularly remember much improvement in services under Red Ken except that the fares got much cheaper. Wasn't there then a huge furore because the rates levy was also applied to all the outer London Boroughs, Like Bromley, which didn't have the tube or London buses?

I used occasionally to take a 22, 11, 14 or 30. They went along the Old Brompton, Kings and Fulham Roads. I can't remember which now. They were handy for going into town at weekends.

For work I used the tube. DH couldn't stand it and bought himself a GWizz and a parking space. He used to leave at 6.30am and rationalised 20 minutes was better than 40 minutes.

The issue in London is that short distances can take such a long time.

When I first came to London, despite the frequency the lack of timings was frustrating. In the country, the bus came (unfailingly at a quarter to the hour from 7am until 10pm), the up train was 36 and 06, and the down train 10 past and 20 to. In 8 years of catching the train to school, (8-16) I can only remember it not running about twice - usually whatever the weather.

40 odd years ago, you could cross London, probably the country, and no-one would be able to track you. You'd pay in cash, there was little to no CCTV, you might pay for a big item with a cheque which would take days to process. No GPS signals. Looking back they were halcyon days.

They quite obviously couldn’t cut half the bus service. Busses particularly at rush hour are totally max packed. There are almost 9 millions of people living in london, you just can’t compare it to a town or city 5% of the size.

You'd have an apoplexy at Essex bus prices. A fiver for one short one way journey on some routes. We really have got it good in London.

I doubt this is do, but if it is, why not rally support and become ‘vocal’ workers/non pensioners.

Yes, what they've done to some routes like 521 or 8 is shocking. Depending where you are travelling from, you probably need to take 2 or 3 buses to get to Oxford Street and I'm not sure whether you still can (I believe you would need to get off and walk for at least 15 minutes to get there)

For the people who can and want to get the tube, yes. What about the rest?

I live near several underground stations and I'll use it if I have to although I prefer the bus. I don't have to go too far East (or South) before they dwindle to much farther and fewer between, and the buses are most people's main transport then.

I'm not sure whether you can blame the central government or the Labour mayor. It seems to be a compex issue.

For example, Business Rates, ULEZ and CC impact one another. If fewer people can access London businesses will suffer.

In any case, the bail out they are referring to seems to be due to the pandemic, and the routes started to be cut a couple of years before then.

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/how-we-are-funded