It's the BL1, or Bakerloop, and runs between Waterloo and Lewisham in lieu of a properly-funded Bakerloo line extension. How ironic that the Mayor chose the 200th birthday of the railways to launch what's essentially a rail replacement bus.
Route BL1: Waterloo to Lewisham Location: London southeast, inner Length of bus journey: 5½ miles, 35 minutes
If you'd like to read about a journey on the BL1, read the black text.
If you'd like to read about the inadequate provision of information, read the brown text.
The BL1 launches opposite Waterloo station, two stops before the end of the Bakerloo line, so whatever you do don't alight the train early and switch to the bus. It's a busy stop and was all the busier on launch day with large numbers of bus afficionados waiting, generally GCSE-adjacent. It helps that the bus is free for the first week, indeed the first two weekends, to encourage exploratory journeys. Five buses an hour sounds good but is actually less frequent than the number of direct trains from Waterloo East to Lewisham, plus they get there in less than half the time, so if you're in a hurry go by rail.
This is already a Superloop bus stop because the rush hour oddity SL6 stops here every weekday evening. What's unusual is that the bus stop now has two loopy tiles, one saying BAKERLOOP and the other SUPERLOOP, despite the former being a sub-brand of the latter. They've chosen to add PART OF THE SUPERLOOP NETWORK underneath to clarify, then under that in pitifully titchy letters is written EXPRESS BUS SERVICE. I cannot overemphasise how pointlessly tiny this lettering is, like something two rows off the bottom of an optician's chart, so has plainly been added by branding jobsworths rather than anyone with an understanding of accessibility.
Also the route number on the bus stop is unexpectedly brown. On the remainder of the Superloop network it's the background that's coloured but here they've only shaded the text. Presumably someone thought it was a good idea but it doesn't work, the brown just looks faint, thus harder to read than the normal black and yet another unnecessary accessibility own goal.
The brown bus hums into place and absorbs the boarding hordes. Interestingly it's not a new vehicle - the entire fleet's five years old, but they are all battery electric double deckers so the Mayor's eco-credentials remain intact. Not only is the exterior half-brown but the seats are brown too, using the official Bakerloo line moquette, and in better nick than that on the trains themselves. I'd decided against boarding the previous service because it looked like there'd be playground vibes on the upper deck whereas this one was a tad more civilised, still with keen young enthusiasts filling the front two rows but not recording the whole journey for posterity while occasionally whooping in the background.
So where are we going? It would help if there was a map but there isn't. There was a map for the consultation, which is seemingly the only time TfL bother to draw maps these days, but for the actual launch there's only a diagram. What's more it's a godawful diagram designed by an organisation fixated on following rules rather than presenting clear information, because won't you look at the absolute mess at the Lewisham end of this.
The route's fairly simple at the Waterloo end - two stops at Elephant & Castle, two down the Old Kent Road and one outside New Cross Gate station. But in Lewisham the buses terminate one side of the shopping centre and start on the other, looping round out of service, and this has been depicted in as unhelpful a way as possible. Molesworth Street is shown as (southbound only), i.e. it's where the bus terminates, while Lewisham Centre and Lewisham Clock Tower are both shown as (northbound only), i.e the first two stops. This may be factually correct but it's also ridiculously complicated, and could easily have been simplified by bifurcating the far end, or else not being so anal about 'Molesworth Street' which is in fact located immediately alongside an entrance to the Lewisham Centre.
It takes five minutes to reach Elephant & Castle where there are two stops, the first outside the Bakerloo line exit which is impressively convenient positioning. The second is on the far side of the mega-junction, above which tower blocks even uglier than the former shopping centre now loom in a bland dispiriting way. That's two stops close together but the next is over a mile away, where the first station on the Bakerloo line extension isn't. Previously bus passengers had a choice of seven different routes but now there's a faster eighth, non-stop, because that's how transformational the Bakerloop will be. Also on the brown bus you get to ride over the flyover above the Bricklayers Arms roundabout and the views up there are great.
The bus shelters where the BL1 stops all have roundels on the roof but they still say SUPERLOOP, not BAKERLOOP, as if someone can't quite decide which version of the brand to run with. Presumably this was cheaper.
Nowhere in inner London is further from a station than this end of Burgess Park so the arrival of the Bakerloop will be much welcomed. A new station would be better, obviously, but that'll never happen because all the new flats that were going to justify its existence are already being built. As yet we're not attracting many locals but it's early days and they'll work it out soon enough.
According to the timetable back at Waterloo it takes 9 minutes to get to the big Tesco at Dunton Street. But it's taken us 12 and we weren't even especially held up, this because timetables at bus stops are always unhelpfully optimistic. No way are we getting to Lewisham in 24 minutes either.
The only other stop down the Old Kent Road is another mile away, again roughly where the next station would be, so it's quite a ride and we do manage to overtake several of the slower buses. If it wasn't for the endless sequence of traffic lights and the fact our driver didn't seem to be interested in hitting even the lowly 20mph speed limit, we might have got there quicker.
The route diagram on the side of the bus isn't great either, but that's because none of those on the Superloop are. It has six equally spaced blobs, two to represent Lewisham, and irregular notches inbetween to represent unnamed bus stops. The representation of the Old Kent Road is particularly unhelpful because the road is 1¾ miles long so who knows where it stops, and only one stop is labelled Old Kent Road anyway. Admittedly it's a stop called "Old Kent Road/Ilderton Road" but here it's ambiguous and unhelpful, mainly because local neighbourhoods don't have focused names, in part because the road never got any stations.
A bus lane speeds us onwards to New Cross Gate, 15 minutes after leaving Elephant & Castle, although that's considerably slower than a tube train could have managed. My fellow top deck passengers are taking photos of passing Eclipse Geminis, discussing Arsenal cup trivia and sucking on cartons of something fruit-based. We finally hit a short jam heading down the hill into Lewisham, not too ferocious on a Saturday but likely to slow things down considerably in the rush hour midweek. Most people alight at the station, which to be fair is where the Bakerloo line would have terminated too, with only the completists and bargain hunters hanging on for the last short hop to the shops.
Stopping arrangements in Lewisham are complicated, as previously mentioned. Not unusual because several other local routes loop awkwardly, but it'll be a while before everyone local works out where the Bakerloop stops. Again a map would have helped but none of the collateral associated with the launch included one, and online there wasn't even a route diagram. Instead the Bus changes webpage gives a 400 word description of the route, and FFS TfL just employ someone to draw maps rather than copping out every time with endless screeds of text. I managed to knock up a decent map based on the original consultation and its outcomes so why couldn't they have managed that too?
The BL1 terminates round the back of the Lewisham Centre, and if you're keen you can simply walk across the mall and catch it straight back again. There'll be fewer enthusiasts on the bus next week, and maybe fewer passengers the week after when a £1.75 fare is reinstated. But the Bakerloop along the Old Kent Road will undoubtedly be a hit, if only because the tube line it's named after will never be extended this far and the brown bus is the quickest ride local residents will ever get.
