If you've ever been caught short on a bus, or nervously crossed your legs and wished your stop was closer, remember you have it easy. You can hop off if things get desperate and take your chances elsewhere but the bus driver has no choice, they have to rely on facilities provided at the terminus.
This can be awkward. Not all routes operate between locations with plumbing infrastructure like bus stations or depots - many stop in the middle of a housing estate or even in deep country. And while there might be a friendly business nearby willing to step in and help, that's not much good if they shut up shop at 6pm and drivers are still out past midnight. The locations of bus termini are determined by all sorts of factors, key amongst which are somewhere to park and somewhere to turn the vehicle round. Availability of decent toilet facilities is never top of the list.
In 2017 the London Assembly published a report called Driven to Distraction which asked, amongst several other welfare questions, whether bus drivers had access to sufficient toilet facilities. In particular committee members demanded "a commitment to deliver a toilet on each bus route (available at all times that the bus is in service) by the end of 2018". Within months every route had "some level of access to toilet facilities", although only 417 bus route termini had full time provision. The Mayor then pledged £6m of funding to deliver permanent toilets along the 40 routes which had only limited access or limited opening hours.
This meant plonking metal boxes on a convenient scrap of roadside in 40 disparate locations, a task which TfL undertook without always informing local residents of their plans. Many were then surprised, or even shocked, to discover drivers would be relieving themselves in toilets within sight of their front gardens. A particular cause célèbre was on Melody Road in Biggin Hill, the southern terminus of route R2, where the facility was vandalised in anger six hours after being installed. Residents nicknamed it the 'Turdis' and made sure to whinge about it loudly to the media. The BBC were told "I have never seen anything like that on a residential street before, it is just hideous," while the Evening Standard extracted this gem from a childcare provider.
"Everyone's been saying that house prices were going to go down. We had someone come to look at our house and it was the first thing she noticed and obviously she wasn't interested."
TfL relented within a month and withdrew the facility, which was excellent news for property values in TN16 3PL but less good for bus drivers who planned on drinking liquids. They've been a bit more careful since the Biggin Hill debacle but have still annoyed several householders elsewhere because there's often nowhere a box like this can hide.
The pandemic delayed the later stages of rollout but over 60 new roadside toilet facilities have been installed since 2018. This included a few long routes which previously had provision only at one end, and also sites which suddenly became critical when an existing route was amended or extended. This blog likes to bring you exciting London transport lists, so here's a cut and pasted version of the routes and bus stands where drivers can now find relief.
Bus routes with a toilet installed since 2018
42 Worship Street; 78 Nunhead, St Mary’s Road; 88 Clapham Common, Old Town; 96 Bluewater; 121 Enfield Lock; 124/126 Eltham High Street; 130 New Addington, Vulcan Way; 163 Morden station; 174 Harold Hill; 196 Norwood Junction; 214/271 Moorgate, Finsbury Square; 232 St Raphael’s Estate; 234 Barnet, The Spires; 263 Highbury and Islington station; 273 Petts Wood station; 274 Lancaster Gate; 281 Tolworth, Ewell Road; 287 Barking station; 288 Queensbury Morrison's; 290 Staines bus station; 291 Queen Elizabeth Hospital; 292 Colindale Asda; 321 Foots Cray Tesco; 343 South Kensington; 345 Natural History Museum; 368 Barking, Hart Estate; 370 Lakeside; 393 Clapton Pond; 414 Maida Hill; 415 Tulse Hill station; 430 Roehampton, Danbury Avenue; 455 Wallington station; 499 Gallows Corner Tesco; E5 Toplocks Estate; G1 Hermitage Lane, Norbury; H13 Ruislip Lido; H20 Hounslow Civic Centre; H28 Syon Lane Tesco, Osterley; K3 Roehampton Asda; K5 Ham, Dukes Avenue; N8 Hainault, the Lowe; R1 St Paul’s Cray; R7 Chelsfield; R68 Kew Retail Park; U7 Uxbridge station; W8 Chase Farm Hospital; W14 Woodford Bridge; W15 Cogan Avenue Estate
Toilets provided to facilitate bus service changes (since January 2019)
27 Glenthorne Road, Hammersmith; 33 Lonsdale Road, Richmond; 100 St Paul's station; 278 Ruislip station; 306 Acton Vale, Bromyard Avenue; 341 Waterloo Road, Lambeth; 386 Woolwich Arsenal DLR; 404 Cane Hill; 440 Wembley Eastern Lands; 483 Windmill Lane, Greenford; S1 Banstead High Street
Papers for a committee meeting this week confirm that at TfL's previous delivery rate it would have taken nine years to achieve this level of provision. The speed of rollout is evidently a success story... so long as you can get around the fact that toilet facilities were never standard in the first place. But we're not quite there just yet.
Several routes "with a round trip greater than 150 minutes with provision only at one end" remain outstanding, and these will be addressed in future as priority and funding allows. Meanwhile according to a recent Mayoral question London still has three bus routes where drivers can only use a toilet for part of a shift.
"There are currently three known routes – R2, 286 and 394 – where access to toilets is not available for all hours of the operating day. One of these (route 286) has a temporary toilet installed because access to the previously available facilities has not been possible due to pandemic restrictions. TfL will review access to staff facilities for route 286 when this changes. Facilities for routes R2 and 394 are currently in detailed design and, subject to funding and planning negotiations, will be built in 2022."
You may notice that one of these outstanding services is the R2, the route which caused all that consternation in deepest Biggin Hill. Its noisiest residents would no doubt be happier to lose their bus service than suffer the indignity of a turdis, because that's car-owning home-owners for you. They should be pleased that TfL's new plan appears to be to add a toilet at the other end of the route, which is round the back of the shops in Orpington where outcry should be less. But that'll still leave the R2's drivers susceptible to an 18 mile round trip on a potentially full bladder, while drivers on certain other routes already endure worse.
So next time you're on a bus remember there's a lot more to running a service than simply carrying passengers, and sometimes a lack of toilet facilities can be the greatest inconvenience.
