London's Worst Bus Route 375: Chase Cross to Passingford Bridge Location: Outer London east Length of journey: 4½ miles, 15 minutes
The 375 is one of TfL's least frequent and least used bus routes. It exists to connect the village of Havering-atte-Bower to urban London, specifically Romford, and is their only public transport link to shops and a station. The Essex village of Stapleford Abbotts benefits too, this because buses have to continue almost to the M25 before turning round, Passingford Bridge being the site of the first roundabout across the border. This means the tip of the route is over 3 miles from any other TfL service, so if the every-90-minutes bus doesn't turn up you are royally stuffed. This is not why the 375 has become London's most balls-uppingly bad bus route.
The flyover at Gallows Corner is being replaced at present and the consequent traffic closures are causing enormous disruption. The 375 goes nowhere near Gallows Corner - always at least two miles distant - and yet for some reason TfL have decided to curtail the route so it no longer serves Romford town centre. They first intended to do this in June, sticking up numerous posters warning passengers that the route would be starting at Chase Cross, then silently changed their mind. However last weekend they finally put the curtailment plan into action, the intention being that this much shorter 375 will continue to operate until the end of September. And now you can't catch the 375 in Romford, you have to catch it 2½ miles up the road, which is effectively the limit of TfL's advice to residents.
Part 1:London's Worst Bus Route - northbound
Beginning the only bus to Havering-atte-Bower and Stapleford Abbotts way out of Romford town centre is a problem, because how do you make sure you catch it? It's crucial to catch it because it only runs every 90 minutes, but now there's the additional issue of how and when to get a connecting bus. Last week it was easy because even if the traffic was terrible you knew that so long as you boarded the 375 in the town centre it'd get you home. This week's advice to 'please use route 175 instead' adds risk, potentially considerable risk, because it might not get you to Chase Cross before the 375 departs. What doesn't help is that all the 375 timetables at all the stops in Romford have been covered over by yellow posters telling you to catch the 175 so you don't know when it would have departed. The apps don't include times either because the bus isn't running, so your only hope of definitely reaching Chase Cross in time is to use a journey planner and hope the traffic doesn't snarl things up.
Also the yellow poster fails to explain where to change buses. 'Chase Cross' covers a fairly broad area north of the A12, and officially it's a crossroads the 175 doesn't actually serve. Most regular users of the 375 will of course know where the bus goes and aim correctly to change on Chase Cross Road, but anyone less informed might easily alight too early or too late and miss their connection. There are in fact two overlapping bus stops on Chase Cross Road where interchange is possible - Felsted Road and Belle Vue Road - but in the absence of a map or specific instructions who's to know? Also neither stop has a shelter, which when you could be waiting up to 90 minutes is potentially a big fail. The best all-weather option is to alight at Merlin Road and walk 80m round the corner to Avelon Road, or to ignore the 175 completely and catch the 103 instead all the way to its terminus.
To test the sudden jeopardy I decided to see what would happen if I just missed a 375, as many people inevitably will. It's another 4½ miles to the end of the route so is it better to wait for 90 minutes or would it be quicker to walk?
A double decker is running on the 375 at the moment, or at least it was yesterday, I presume because of the availability of the vehicle not because anyone imagines it could ever fill up. Off it headed up the hill, Havering-atte-Bower being the highest point in northeast London, and off I pootled after it. It took 20 uphill minutes to reach the centre of the village by the green and stocks, which is within the physical capability of most villagers but by no means all. Here I noted that someone had tied an England flag to the village sign, which is not a usual presence so is likely related to the current burst of flaggification across the country. It was either left there by a patriot or by a pea-brained racist, and given they'd attached it the wrong way round so that 'England' read backwards I'd suggest the latter.
After half an hour I'd reached the edge of the village and also the edge of London. TfL would rather go no further, it'd mean they could run the bus every hour rather than every hour and a half, but like I said they have to continue because there's nowhere to turn round. That said there were passengers waiting on the other side of the road for the return journey, not just at the last stop in London but also at the first stop in Essex. What was odd, when I checked on Citymapper, was that the returning 375 should have been due but was instead apparently 25 minutes away. This was the first hint that my southbound journey was going to be a timetabling disaster but I didn't know that yet.
Stapleford Abbotts goes on a bit - 2½ miles between the signs at each end of the village - although most people live towards the southern end. They boast a village shop, also a pub which doubles up as cafe and takeaway, also a school although that's quite a hike up the road. I hiked up the road, getting unexpectedly drenched when the earlier sunshine turned into a 20 minute shower. The returning 375 finally passed while I was sheltering under an overhanging tree, 27 minutes later than the timetable at the nearest stop suggested. I continued north past a surprising amount of housing infill, typically gated bungalows or clusters of detached fourbedders, also a few NIMBY signs saying the village can't sustain a few dozen new homes.
The pavement finally gave out just beyond the primary school, but thankfully the verge ahead was wide enough to avoid having to walk in the road. It's a bit of a rat run out here, being the back way into Ongar, and also offers a fine panorama across a golden valley of ploughed fields. If London feels a very long way away that's because it is. The penultimate stop is at The Rabbits, a popular pub serving an immediate population of about 20, beyond which one last downhill stretch took me to the Passingford Bridge roundabout. The former ford and current bridge are crossings of the River Roding, in case you were wondering. Here I found the 375's last stop out and its first stop back, so smiled because I had indeed beaten the bus. It turned up five minutes later, disgorging zero passengers into the middle of nowhere, and I smiled again because the ride home would be so much easier. And that's where I was wrong.
Part 2:London's Worst Bus Route - southbound
According to the timetable at the Passingford Bridge bus stop the 375 was due to return in seven minutes time. The route's always operated by a single vehicle so the turnaround is short to allow it to head back to Romford and start the circuit again. I had no reason to realise that the timetable was wrong until the driver wound down her window, leaned out and informed me that she wasn't due to return for another hour. I think she'd been expecting the look of incredulity that spread across on my face. How on earth does a seven minute turnaround become 60 minutes instead? She got on the radio and checked with the garage, also checked her laminated duty card, and both of these confirmed that she was indeed supposed to sit here in the middle of nowhere for a full hour. She even showed me the card when I went over to have a chat, because she thought it was as ridiculous as I did.
My previous assumption, based on everything I'd seen online, was that the normal 375 timetable would have been retained with the Romford end chopped off. People round here know the timetable inside out, thus they know to turn up at one of the nine times a day the bus actually runs. It would therefore have made sense to run it to time, i.e. to have the driver sit around at Chase Cross for the best part of an hour so that normal headway could be maintained. Instead it seemed some moron had tweaked things so that the longest wait was at Passingford Bridge, and then some other moron had decided not to print any new timetables. Even the so-called Timetables page on the TfL website still shows last week's timetable, not the new abomination the buses are running to now.
Normal timetable
Passingford Bridge (arr)
07:09
08:49
10:21
11:52
13:23
15:19
16:35
17:52
19:17
Passingford Bridge (dep)
07:15
09:00
10:30
12:00
13:30
15:24
16:40
18:00
19:30
Chase Cross
07:32
09:17
10:46
12:16
13:46
15:40
16:56
18:16
19:46
Romford Station
07:49
09:34
11:00
12:30
14:00
15:55
17:10
18:30
19:58
New timetable
Passingford Bridge (arr)
07:09
08:49
10:21
11:52
13:23
15:19
16:35
17:52
19:17
Passingford Bridge (dep)
07:51
09:25
10:57
12:27
14:23
15:43
17:01
18:25
19:30
Chase Cross
08:08
09:42
11:13
12:43
14:39
15:59
17:17
18:41
19:46
I should say I haven't uncovered this new timetable anywhere, I've attempted to assemble it by using TfL's Journey Planner and a website that tracks specific vehicles on specific routes. I certainly hadn't worked it out while I was stood by the roadside at Passingford Bridge wondering what to do for an unexpected hour before the bus finally headed back to civilisation. Apps were no help because they only announce the next bus when it's 30 minutes away and this rural hiatus was double that. Analysing what I now believe to be the new timetable, what were previously dalliances of no more than 10 minutes at the northern end of the route have been systematically extended, in many cases 'only' by about 25 minutes but in my case I hit the wazzock jackpot and got the full hour. I decided to walk back instead.
I actually walked for over an hour, all the way back into Greater London, before the returning 375 finally caught up. Along the way I passed two people waiting patiently at remote bus stops thinking the bus would be along imminently, as timetabled, but instead it was faffing at the terminus for no good reason. One was aboard the bus when I finally boarded and one had plainly given up and gone home, and who could blame him? This is why I'm claiming the 375 is London's new worst bus route, because someone's changed the timetable without telling any of the passengers, and you really shouldn't do that with a bus that runs every hour and a half unless you're an institutional sadist.
One thing the driver said, which makes perfect logistical sense, is that in the time she'd been asked to wait at Passingford Bridge she could have driven the bus all the way to Chase Cross and back again. Indeed TfL could have taken the opportunity during this six week window to run a more frequent timetable, at least every hour, maybe even every 45 minutes, to make up for the inconvenience of not being to travel into Romford direct. Instead they stuck with 90 minutes, seemingly for familiarity's sake, but then inexplicably changed the times of all the return journeys. Digging into the Journey Planner I have a suspicion that the database contains more than one set of timings and someone's joined them up really badly.
I should also say that the driver asked me to tell you this. She suggested sharing the news of the new timetable with local residents, perhaps on Facebook, and getting as many people to complain to TfL as possible. She had no idea I write a blog people at TfL actually read, indeed last time I blogged about the ineptitude of the changes one manager emailed to thank me for "highlighting the inconsistency in the 375 publicity/service operation". It's ten times worse now, inadequately explained and leaving pensioners by the wayside, and all because nobody gives a damn about the residents of outer Havering. Let's hope somebody official works out what the temporary timetable really is, prints it out and tells people what's actually going on, else the 375 will remain London's most unnecessarily awful bus route until October.
