Friday, October 22, 2021
Over the last few months TfL have been quietly reducing the frequency of numerous bus routes in the central London area. If we're not travelling so much, why run buses quite so often?
Cutting frequencies is a lot easier than cutting routes because TfL don't need to run a lengthy consultation, they can simply pick a date and remove vehicles from the street.
For example back in August route 2 went from every 7-8 minutes to every 8-9 minutes, route 7 went from every 8 minutes to every 12 minutes and route 9 went from every 7-8 minutes to every 10 minutes.
But the cuts aren't just on three routes, as many as 37 different routes have been affected since August (and we're only partway through announcements for November).
Bus frequency cuts since August 2021
Aug: 2, 7, 9, 16, 27, 30, 43, 113, 148, 507, 521, N9
Sep: 11, 22, 29, 49, 59, 253, 254, 277, 436, D7
Oct: 17, 19, 38, 42, 68, 88, 133, 149, 245, A10
Nov: 13, 21, 40, 63, 76, 87, 91, 92, 168, 188, 242
Dec:
Ten cuts a month is a significant long-term reduction of capacity. It means a longer wait for passengers, imperceptibly on certain routes but much more noticeably on others. It also saves a good few millions from a beleaguered budget.
TfL don't make it easy to keep track of these reductions, announcing them silently on a webpage that regularly overwrites, so I thought I'd try to document them here for posterity's sake. Your next bus may be further away than you think.
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