The latest Superloop route has been announced and is up for consultation. The SL15 will run between Clapham Junction and Eltham - a proper orbital for once - with the intention that buses start operating next year. [consultation][map]
The key rationale is that the route follows the South Circular almost all the way, just as the SL1, SL2 and new SL13 essentially track the North Circular. But whereas the North Circular is a broad dual carriageway, the South Circular is a hamstrung collection of ordinary roads bolted together, suggesting the SL15 won't be terribly speedy. It will however fill a significant gap, because if you want to follow the same route at the moment it takes at least ten different buses. So that's what I attempted. See if you can guess how long it took.
The SL15 will kick off round the back of Clapham Junction where there isn't currently room. TfL are keen its drivers have easy access to a toilet (as "it may take up to 72 minutes to get from Eltham Station to Clapham Junction") so intend to kick out the C3 to make space. The fallout from this involves turning an existing bus stop into a bus stand, evicting seven other routes, and this is expected to inconvenience about 7000 passengers per day. Not everything about introducing the Superloop is a positive.
The first stop on the SL15 will be by the railway bridge, so that's where I went to start my shadowing journey. And I was immediately thwarted because it's closed, this while the council prettify and de-pigeon the glum space under the bridge. Damn, I really wanted a 35.
Instead I wandered down to the main shopping street and waited there. I now had the option of another route, the G1 which links directly to the next target of Clapham South station. However it goes the long way and it's only every 20 minutes and it wasn't showing up on the board, so I caught the 35 as planned instead. Start the clock.
[0h00]35: Clapham Junction to Clapham Common Length of journey: 2 stops, 3 minutes
You could take this bus east to Brixton but the Superloop aims further south so I wasn't going to be on it for long. A special award to the driver who managed to close the doors onto a pensioner standing in the doorway trying to find his card.
No buses operate along the western edge of Clapham Common so I had to alight and walk, passing a heck of a lot of exercising dogs along the way. This entirely unassuming parkside road is somehow the A205, the official designation of the South Circular. After half a mile the G1 emerges from a side road, and the next bus wasn't far away so I could always wait and catch it.
[0h23]G1: Clapham Common to Clapham South Length of journey: 1 stop, 4 minutes
The G1 may be London's most frustrating bus, enduring numerous contorted wiggles before doubling back to serve other unserved roads. In this case it passes Clapham South station but entirely fails to stop outside, overshooting up a side road and stopping nowhere near where I needed to be. So in fact I decided not to catch it and walked all the way to the tube station instead, easily beating the bus.
[0h27]355: Clapham South to Clapham Park Length of journey: 4 stops, 4 minutes
This was just a single decker and it wasn't coping. By stop three we had a wheelchair aboard and standing room only, then ten more passengers tried to board plus an infirm lady with a stroller. This is the intended Superloop stop, not the better connected next stop at Clapham Park where the 57 and 59 begin. I squeezed off there.
[0h46]57: Clapham Park to Streatham Hill Length of journey: 2 stops, 3 minutes
Grrr, the 57 runs "every 12-14 minutes" and I had to wait for 13. And grrr, like all the other buses along here it only runs for a few stops before turning off. If you want to head east it's ridiculously bitty and inefficient, which'll be why the SL15 is such an excellent proposal. A special award to the driver who drove one-handed for a minute while finishing off his Lavazza coffee.
This interchange is currently rubbish because neither the 57 nor the 201 stop near the crossroads so it's a five minute walk plus a nasty set of traffic lights. Even after all that I had a maximum wait.
[1h09]201: Streatham Hill to Tulse Hill Length of journey: 5 stops, 6 minutes
The 201 doesn't go direct to Tulse Hill, it keeps passengers happy by diverting off to serve an estate. This leaves three quarters of a mile of the South Circular unbussed. If I were relying on a Hopper I'd already be onto my second fare.
Round the corner from Tulse Hill station is a low bridge, so low that the SL15 will be forced to have single-decker buses. Only the 201 and P13 use the road at present and they're single deckers too.
[1h36]P13: Tulse Hill to Wood Vale Length of journey: 7 stops, 19 minutes
Finally a bus ride that lasted more than six minutes. Unfortunately much of that was because of roadworks, which are always going to be a problem on a duff arterial like the South Circular. We whizzed to West Dulwich station (where there'll be a Superloop stop) and Dulwich College (where there won't), but got caught up in a 10 minute jam alongside Dulwich Park.
Annoyingly for anyone heading east the P13 doesn't stop in the same place as the 185. That's the third time this has happened, and another reason why the SL15 will be an utter boon.
[2h12]185: Wood Vale to Catford Length of journey: 11 stops, 18 minutes
Unbelievably I'd already been travelling for over two hours and wasn't yet halfway. Thankfully the 185 was a zippy bus that'd take me the equivalent of three Superloop stops - one by Forest Hill station, one at the foot of Brockley Rise and one outside Catford and Catford Bridge stations.
[2h31]202: Catford to Lee Length of journey: 6 stops, 12 minutes
Finally a perfect swap from one bus to the next. I was overdue one of those after several painful waits. Trundling east along plain streets I kept thinking 'Can this really be the South Circular' and of course it was. At Lee you could switch to the SL4, another Superloop route which parallels the 202, but I had to alight for the Sidcup-bound 160.
[2h46]160: Lee to Eltham Green Length of journey: 4 stops, 6 minutes
Finally the South Circular looked arterial and we sped along. The big question was then did I stay on the 160 for its diversion round a big council estate or did I stick to the official SL15 route? I plumped for the latter, aware I had a choice of three routes, but had to run to catch the B16 to make it all worthwhile.
[2h55]B16: Eltham Green to Eltham Length of journey: 3 stops, 5 minutes
In good news I did beat the 160 to Eltham High Street. In bad news nobody's put a bus stop near the crossroads so the choice was undershoot or overshoot. Currently not a single bus route turns left here, not like the SL15 will. However the Superloop is not going to be convenient for the shops, sorry.
[3h05]233: Eltham to Eltham Station Length of journey: 2 stops, 2 minutes
You could walk this last bit but so many routes go to the station that it's always quicker to ride. The driver of the 233 wasn't expecting anyone to be so lazy at the very end of his route and nearly didn't stop.
To answer my earlier question, it took 3 hours and 7 minutes to ride from Clapham Junction to Eltham. That's 1 hour 25 minutes of actually travelling and 1 hour 43 minutes of faffing between stops and waiting around. All of the latter would have been wiped out had I been riding a single Superloop bus rather than ten individual buses. Also an express bus would only have stopped sixteen times, speeding up the journey faster than the almost-1½ hours I took.
The big downside for the SL15 is going to be traffic snarl-ups, of which the South Circular gets plenty, also the roads are almost all single carriageway so overtaking isn't going to be easy. But as I hope I've shown, making the same east-west journey at present is an utterly fragmented nightmare so the introduction of the SL15 should be a gamechanger for all along its route.
