Route 241: Royal Wharf to Hackney Wick (Here East) Location: London east, cross-Newham Length of bus journey: 8 miles, 50 minutes
Yesterday route 241 was extended from Stratford City into the Olympic Park. No fuss was made, no hordes descended. Buses which would normally have terminated outside Westfield instead continued via a wilfully tortuous route to the multi-storey at Here East, inevitably rammed with empty seats. The extension is designed to deliver a bus service to the East Bank, the cultural waterfront whose landmark buildings are currently half open. It also delivers a bus service to Sweetwater, one of the five post-Olympic neighbourhoods where currently nobody lives because not a single flat has been built. Arguably it's still too early for the extension to be useful and yet the change has been in the offing for well over a decade waiting for the right moment to launch.
I first blogged that route 241 might be extended across the Olympic Park way back in July 2010 when the idea appeared in planning documents for the Orbit. Instead when Westfield opened in 2011 the 241 was merely extended across the railway to Stratford City bus station, leaving the 388 to take responsibility for travel to the top of the park. A specific extension to Here East first appeared in a consultation in December 2012, at this stage an aspirational change waiting for the Olympic Media Centre to be reopened. A firmer proposition appeared in July 2017 as part of a wide-ranging review of routes connecting to Crossrail, but bosses ultimately decided not to proceed. The emergence of a free shuttle bus for Here East employees in May 2017 likely delayed things somewhat, and a proper 241 extension consultation only emerged in May 2024 when Carpenters Road reopened. And now finally here we are, 15 years on, mostly needlessly.
I rode the entire route, not just the extension, all the way from flat-stacked Royal Wharf. It wasn't terribly busy at that end either, this being another extension circa 2022 on a much-tweaked route. If the Thames-side incomers want to go to Stratford they take the DLR rather than slum it through Custom House and Plaistow, and only on reaching these parts do passenger numbers really start ramping up. I'm pleased to report that timetables at bus stops all appear to have been updated, or at least I never spotted one that hadn't. A yellow poster has also been added explaining the extension into the Olympic Park, not that I can imagine anyone in south Newham ever wanting to make use of it. Our accumulated load started disembarking at Stratford Broadway, poured off at the station and fully emptied out at Westfield, this being where the 241 formerly stopped. The twisty-turny extension starts here.
And it is ridiculously twisty, this the fault of the post-Olympic road network which never quite links up in an optimal way. Crossing from one side of the station to the other has already taken 7 minutes and now we face another loop to get from 'up here' to 'down there'. The first stop on the new extension is outside the Aquatics Centre, a stop in use since 2013 and now served by three different routes. It might feel like overkill to serve a swimming pool and a skatepark, but the opening of a whopping university campus alongside in 2022 means that 16 buses an hour is sometimes justified. OK, now the new bit.
Carpenters Road was once a grimy backroad lined by mucky businesses nowhere else wanted. Originally the 276 ran along it, mainly as a quick route to Hackney Wick, but was diverted through Bow instead in 2007 when all this was sealed off to build the Olympic Park. After the Games Carpenters Road reopened as little more than a service road, this time with the 339 wending its way through, this until December 2018 when the road closed again to enable the construction of the East Bank. Neither the 276 nor the 339 have ever returned and the backroad is now the province of the 241, whisking students and punters to all things cultural. A pair of brand new bus stops await.
The problem is that the bus has arrived at the tradesman's entrance and all the proper access is upstairs round the front. At Sadlers Wells all you see is the 'Stage Door' and a long steep outdoor staircase rising to piazza level. The BBC's new studios aren't open yet, indeed theirs is the building hard-hatted folk are still wandering out of. The London College of Fashion thankfully does have a lower-level entrance, even if it is very much the back way. The V&A proper also isn't opening until next year, so essentially the only people benefiting from all this at present are students. And because the Olympic Park is really busy up top I can imagine hundreds of parkgoers now opening their apps and being delivered a route involving the 241 back to Stratford whereas they'd be much better off not schlepping down dozens of steps for an occasional bus when it would in fact be quicker to walk. Onwards.
The second set of bus stops used exclusively by the 241 are further up the East Bank, way past the building site where 700 new homes haven't yet been started. The only buildings nearby are the Park's HQ where gardeners and security staff clock on and an electricity substation, so not much call for public transport. These stops have been mothballed since the last 339 passed through in 2018 and are finally seeing potential use again. What's more the northbound stop is still displaying a 2014 spider map, now even more horribly out of date than before, even though someone at TfL has been round recently and removed the out-of-date spider in the southbound shelter. Intriguingly neither of these stops appeared on the map in the recent consultation, only two more round the corner that don't yet exist.
This is the northeast corner of Sweetwater, or will be in maybe five years time, and the good news is that if anyone finally gets round to building a single block of flats then residents will at least have a bus service. The 241 nevertheless goes on a looping tour of the empty neighbourhood because that's the only way to get from down here to the flyover. Along the way it briefly overlaps route 339 but not anywhere with a bus stop, so the 339 remains the better option if you're heading canalside. And when the bus finally climbs up to Marshgate Lane the really stupid thing is that construction teams painted BUS STOP on the road back in 2021 in readiness for this weekend, but no bus stop has been added. They even added an annoying kink in the adjacent cycle lane in readiness for a shelter, squishing the pedestrian gap to a bare minimum, but it turns out they needn't have bothered.
The next stop is a longstanding one, immediately outside the Copper Box on the main drag of Westfield Avenue. This time there are flats nearby, also flats under construction, also regular sporting events, a large food court and a shortcut across the river to Hackney Wick station. The 388 stops here and what's more it takes the direct 4 minute route to and from Stratford, not the circuitous 8 minute safari we've just endured. There's then no further stop until the terminus at Here East, even though it might be useful to fill the 600m gap to serve for example the new V&A Storehouse and adjacent facilities. Instead it's all the way or nothing, turfed out kerbside between yet another university and a multi-storey car park. Was it really worth it?
It will be worth it one day, when the East Bank is finished and 1500 unstarted flats along the extension are complete. This is just TfL getting in early, while simultaneously getting in 13 years later than they first suggested. A fine balance needs to be struck, and somebody has judged that now is the time to push things further with three extra vehicles on the route, even if initially they carry mostly empty seats. In the meantime the 241 extension is a round-the houses route that doesn't yet go round any houses, thus generally unnecessary, and you're unlikely to be riding it any time soon.
