Way back in 2017 when everyone thought Crossrail was imminent, TfL launched a massive consultation on bus changes to support the new service. Many of those changes occurred long before any purple through-trains ran, but two are only happening today.
Here's what the TfL bus changes webpage has to say.
Changes will be made to the route taken by buses on routes 95 and E5 in the Dormer's Wells area from Saturday 27 May. This is to improve reliability and provide more direct journeys into Southall Town Centre and station.
Route 95 will be rerouted from Somerset Road direct to Lady Margaret Road in both directions. It will no longer serve Cornwall Avenue, Allenby Road, Dormer's Wells Lane, Burns Avenue and Carlyle Avenue. Route 105 will continue to provide a 24-hour service over this section of route no longer served by the 95.
Route E5 will be rerouted from Telford Road via Burns Avenue and Carlyle Avenue to Lady Margaret Road in both directions. It will no longer serve stops on Dormer's Wells Lane or the hail and ride section on North Road, Thurston Road, Allendale Avenue, Dormer's Avenue or Denbigh Road. Passengers should use routes 95 or 120 from Lady Margaret Road, route 105 from Dormer's Wells Lane or routes 105 or E5 from Burns Avenue or Carlyle Avenue which are a short walk away.
But there's no map to explain the changes because of course there isn't. A map would make this splurge of words much easier to understand but maps remain outside TfL's level of competence, or at least beyond the limit of business cases and management priorities.
n.b. maps were produced for the consultation in 2017, but everything pre-2019 was deleted when TfL upgraded their consultation platform in 2021, which has proved particularly short-sighted given how long it's taken this particular change to come to fruition.
So I thought I'd knock up my own before and after map (based on the quadrant maps TfL used to produce). I hope this makes things clearer.
• The 95 is being sent on a much more direct route.
• The 105 is continuing to follow the wigglier route through Dormer's Wells.
• The E5 is being diverted to follow some of the 95's previous meander, leaving the existing Hail and Ride section unserved.
The streamlined 95 will speed passengers to and from Southall much quicker, but will still terminate two stops short of the Crossrail station. This seems somewhat perverse amid a set of changes designed to improve purple interchange, but that's because another change to the 95 has yet to be introduced. Eventually it'll be extended to serve the massive regenerated Southall Gasworks site but the roads aren't ready yet, nor indeed the flats, so only the Dormer's Wells tweak has been introduced so far.
Crossrail may now be complete, but implementing its bus changes has taken even longer.
