Route SL10: Harrow - North Finchley Length of journey: 9 miles, 50 minutes
London gained a new outer orbital bus route yesterday, a peripheral dash connecting the boroughs of Harrow, Brent and Barnet.
It's the first new Superloop service, the previous four merely being existing routes renumbered. The SL10 mostly follows the route of the 183 but stops less often, and has been introduced so the Mayor has something to point at when car drivers rage about his clean air policies. It's also been introduced in a competent manner - all the right tiles, new timetables, updated spider maps and members of staff at every stop to help ease passengers into the new routine. But don't worry, I still found plenty to tell you about when I rode the entire route, quite quickly, all the way from Harrow to North Finchley.
Loopfax: SL6-SL10 are now all up and running but none of SL1-SL5 have been introduced yet.
Loopfax: Three-sevenths of the Superloop 'loop' is now operational (SL7 → SL9 → SL10)
Loopfax: The SL10 is the only daytime bus route whose number is four characters long (several nightbuses are)
Harrow Bus Station is somewhat choked, being the terminus of at least ten different routes and pulled into by several others. The SL10 has been squeezed in at Stop E, but parks up over by the shopping centre so as not to get in the way. Eastbound travellers now have the option of a speedybus or an allstopper, and on Day One three members of staff in pink hi-vis were on hand in an attempt to cajole passengers onto the correct service. 'First stop Kenton,' they cried when a bus turned up, either gleamingly new in its branded red and white livery or not yet smothered.
Staff had hundreds of maps to hand out... but not useful ones, just a glossy promotional schematic of the entire loop. TfL must have printed a job lot because they were identical to those previously distributed in July, even down to the typo at North Woolwich. One of the staff at the bus station was delimiting the SL10 in fibre tip before he dished them out so it didn't look like all the oranges merged into each other. Particularly fortunate first day passengers were also given little shiny Superloop badges (I didn't get one here but I did pick one up later).
Leaving Harrow the buses weren't especially busy because it takes time for the travelling public to get used to a new route, so I found found myself upstairs surrounded almost entirely by empty seats. But the front seat had already been taken by a Boy Who Likes Buses, cameraphone poised, because the need to ride the full route on Day One spans the generations. When another BWLB climbed the stairs and recognised a fellow traveller their somewhat excitable conversation went like this... "SL10!" "SL10!" "Do you have a YouTube channel?" (the answer alas was "No").
Kenton in four minutes is pretty good going, ditto Kingsbury in fifteen. But it's only achieved by sailing past stops where multiple passengers are waiting to go the same way, so they still have to wait for the 183 instead. What's more the 183's frequency has just been reduced from eight buses an hour to six, so if you're not lucky enough to live near one of the express stops you'll now be waiting longer. I observed a collective sadness on the faces of the passengers at some of the bypassed stops, not to mention a few anguished waves that melted into a flounce of disappointment.
And this works both ways. A number of passengers on the SL10 expected to alight where they normally do, dinging the bell long before the driver was ever going to stop, but were then left standing by the doors and carried far out of their way. Between Kenton and Kingsbury I heard an unfulfilled ding before every single unserved stop. People will eventually learn, but at the moment the only way to tell where the bus actually stops is to check the timetables at bus stops. A simple list or map would be extremely helpful, but at present the sole physical manifestation of a stylised line diagram is on the outside of the bus facing away from boarding passengers.
The BWLB in the front seat kept filming chunks of the journey, occasionally thwarted by tedious waits at traffic lights or roundabouts. Two excitable children later filled in beside him, their Mum pleased that the family now had a quicker way to get to auntie's house in Finchley. I watched to see who was in the front seat on SL10s coming in the opposite direction and its occupants included a man taking photos, two hoodied teens, a bus company employee and a lady in a red coat wearing a Santa hat. "Too early," I thought, "too early."
The SL10's handful of stops have generally been well chosen to ensure decent overlap with other routes, so for example 'Hendon Magistrates Court' permits a swift switcheroo to or from buses down the Edgware Road. The SL10 is also extremely good at linking disjoint railway lines... Metropolitan, Bakerloo, Jubilee, Thameslink, Northern... bringing orbital connectivity to corridors normally served radially. That's why in Hendon it finally deviates from the slower 183 so that it can tick off the Underground, even if that means a marginally longer end-to-end journey.
I stopped off at Hendon station to see how things were going mid-route and was pleased to find the tiles and timetables were fully up to date. On closer inspection, however, the timings on the little strips across the top of the timetables were insane. The SL10 timings claimed that a journey from Hendon back to Kingsbury was 15 minutes and the time to Harrow Bus station was 33. The corresponding times for route 183 were however 14 and 31 minutes respectively, suggesting that the express bus is slower than the all-stopper, and which ludicrous database spewed this out?
Back aboard an eastbound bus a fresh YouTuber was in pole position and busy filming frontwards for his channel. He got ever so animated every time another Superloop vehicle went past, indeed any bus, and at one point apologised to nearby passengers for his excitability. The nadir of his commentary came when he asked his very tolerant neighbours, a local couple, whether it was their first time aboard the SL10. I realise my bus travelogues aren't everybody's cup of tea either, but at least you don't have to sit through 50 minutes of video to find out.
At Hendon Central the dreaded message "The driver has been told to wait at this stop to even out the service" was played. This seemed particularly ridiculous three stops from the end of the route, disbenefitting everyone already aboard in favour of potentially non-existent latecomers. What's more I checked on an app and the next SL10 was 12 minutes away which is precisely the timetabled interval. It's supposed to be an express, for heaven's sake, so why deliberately dawdle?
With a handful of exceptions, all the relevant bus shelters had Superloop roundels on top. At two of those stops the roundels were actually illuminated, indeed I hadn't realised they did that, with power provided via a cable draped off the roof. A recent FoI request has unearthed the cost of branding the stops and shelters along the previous four Superloop routes, which turns out to be £120,000, and I wonder how much of that is getting the signs to light up.
The leap between The Quadrant and Finchley Central is the longest on the journey at over a mile and a half and skips eight intermediate bus stops. This is excellent news for anyone intending to whizz straight through because it really speeds things up, but bad news for anyone who lives inbetween because this transport initiative is literally passing them by. A more typical number of stops to skip is three, four or five, and perhaps that would have been more appropriate here. Routes 125 and 143 mop up the unfortunates.
Passengers were even keen to board at the penultimate stop because a one-off whizz to North Finchley is worth the effort. Our bus had made good time, although looking at the Saturday traffic queueing the other way I suspect not all the SL10's passengers will be so lucky. We drew up outside the gloomy bus station, thankfully not inside it, and then our driver headed off to the stand on Woodhouse Road for a rest break.
I was intrigued to see that the shelter across the road had a Superloop roundel on top despite our bus not stopping there, and then I remembered that this is due to be the start of route SL1 and that's due to enter service imminently, indeed you might even find me back here next month. Geekbloggers and nerdvloggers assemble.
