diamond geezer

 Saturday, December 23, 2017

Since June TfL have been quietly chipping away at London's bus network without almost anybody noticing. Rather than cutting routes they've been reducing the frequency of the buses, affecting almost 10% of daytime routes and more than 15% of overnighters. I've been keeping track here and here.

This table summarises which bus routes have had their daytime frequencies cut, month by month, and how many buses per hour they've lost.

	Number of buses cut per hour
	½ a bus	1 bus	1½ buses	2 buses	2½	3
Jun				48, 176	E3
Jul	22, C1	253, 384	14, 74	31		63
Aug		5
Sep	205	47, 209, 225, 269, 345, 391, 488	156, 210, 222, H98	11, 29, C3
Oct		42, 187, 276, E6, P12	321, C11, U4
Nov	24, 368	89, 105, 119, W11	106, 349	483	100
Dec		200, W12	28

That's 48 bus routes cut, by a total of 60 buses per hour.

Here's a similar table for weekend nightbuses.

	Number of nightbuses cut per hour
	1 bus	2 buses	3 buses	4 buses	8 buses
Jun-Aug	N41, N73	N15
Sep	43, 88, N16	6, 24, 94, N8, N91, N98, N207	134, N9	N5, N20	N29
Oct-Dec	N89	N26, N55		N97

That's 22 nightbus routes cut, by a total of 50 buses per hour. 30% of "nightbuses beginning with N" have been cut. September was particularly savage. The N29 was the biggest casualty.

One reason for the cuts is that fewer people are travelling by bus, so fare revenue is lower and it's become uneconomic to run too many buses. The outcome of the cuts is that passengers will have to wait a bit longer for each bus, so might drift off to other modes of transport, which'd mean fewer people travelling by bus. A potentially vicious circle.

Meanwhile these are the 21 bus cuts TfL already have lined up for January.

Daytime bus frequency cuts in January 2018

Route	Frequency before	Frequency after	Cut in frequency
39	every 7-8 mins	every 8 mins	½ bus an hour
93	every 6 mins	every 6-7 mins	1 bus an hour
163	every 8 mins	every 10 mins	1½ buses an hour
230	every 12 mins	every 15 mins	1 bus an hour
269	every 10 mins	every 12 mins	1 bus an hour
279	every 4-5 mins	every 5-7 mins	3 buses an hour
285	every 10 mins	every 12 mins	1 bus an hour
329	every 6-7 mins	every 7-8 mins	1 bus an hour
430	every 8 mins	every 10 mins	1½ buses an hour
452	every 7-8 mins	every 8-9 mins	1 bus an hour
484	every 10 mins	every 12 mins	1 bus an hour

Weekend nightbus frequency cuts in January 2018

Route	Frequency before	Frequency after	Cut in frequency
14	every 12 mins	every 20 mins	2 buses an hour
25	every 6 mins	every 12 mins	5 buses an hour
53	every 12 mins	every 15 mins	1 bus an hour
242	every 20 mins	every 30 mins	1 bus an hour
N22	every 20 mins	every 30 mins	1 bus an hour
N86	every 15 mins	every 20 mins	1 bus an hour
N87	every 10 mins	every 15 mins	2 buses an hour
N109	every 20 mins	every 30 mins	1 bus an hour
N155	every 8 mins	every 15 mins	3½ buses an hour
N279	every 12 mins	every 20 mins	2 buses an hour

More cuts will be announced later, I'm sure. I'll report back as the new year progresses. I wonder when Londoners will finally notice.

posted 07:00 :

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