London's next dead bus 533: Castelnau to Hammersmith Location: southwest London Length of journey: 6 miles, 30 minutes
The 533 was introduced in 2019 as a temporary measure after the closure of Hammersmith Bridge following safety checks. It's still running seven years later because it proved unexpectedly popular. But it dies tonight, as the very last of London's 'five hundred and something' buses bites the dust.
Six bus routes used to cross Hammersmith Bridge until one day they couldn't and TfL had to conjure up a brand new local network. Residents of Barnes and Castelnau suddenly found themselves unable to connect to the tube so the 378 was created for the long haul to Putney Bridge and the 533 for the longer haul to Hammersmith. The south side of the bridge had been three-quarters of a mile from Hammersmith, now suddenly it was six, and a journey which had taken five minutes took nearer 30. But passengers still boarded the 533 in decent numbers because not everyone wants to walk across a bridge, or indeed can, thus a mystery tour via Chiswick Bridge still appealed.
Technically the 533 isn't being withdrawn because pretty much exactly the same route continues to operate tomorrow. All that's really happening is that the 533's existing loop in Barnes is being broken and the buses are being renumbered 209. But TfL never describe a route change as a 'renumbering', indeed I can't remember the last time they did, instead preferring to describe the switch as a 'restructuring'. ("Route 209 will be restructured to run from Hammersmith Lower Bus Station to Barnes Pond replacing the majority of route 533"). Nevertheless route 209 isn't being restructured it's being killed off, indeed the 209 is genuinely London's next dead bus.
The 209 used to be one of London's most frequent buses, operating a busy shuttle service every six minutes between Mortlake and Hammersmith. Then the bridge closed and it couldn't do that any more so its raison d'être ceased. After a brief fling to Putney Bridge the 209 settled down as a brief link between Mortlake and Castelnau, now London's third shortest bus route and running only every 30 minutes. As such it's almost entirely unnecessary so this once key route is rightly being pensioned off, except because the route number resonates it makes sense to use it for the rejigged 533 instead.
Let's go for a ride, and along the way I'll try to point out why this change (and others starting tomorrow) have more downsides than up. [changes][consultation][geographic map before][geographic map after][new diagrammatic map]
This is Castelnau, a lovely suburb surrounded on three sides by a meander in the Thames. It used to be busy with traffic and easy to get to, now it's very quiet and very hard to get to unless you walk or cycle across the bridge. Crossing the bridge is by far your best option, if you can, but if not the 533 is the only direct public transport link. However it's not necessarily very reliable, as I discovered when I turned up and the next bus was 40 minutes away rather than a maximum of fifteen. In that time I could have walked across the bridge to Hammersmith and back, twice, but that would have negated the reason for catching the 533 in the first place. So let's jump ahead to when it eventually arrived, taking all that suburban purgatory as read.
There are nine of us waiting by the time the 533 finally appears, one of whom is a mother with a pram much nicer than the average buggy. The driver plays the Please Stay With Your Buggy For Your Child's Safety message anyway, totally oblivious that the mother has already sat down holding her child and the pram is empty. Castelnau is also the name of the road south, a leafy mile of prime villas several of which are midway through an expensive refurbishment. Five bus routes head this way, but from tomorrow that gets cut to three because it's not just the 209 and 533 being fiddled with. Residents currently have a direct link to both Putney and Wandsworth but when the 378 gets diverted they'll have neither, not without a tedious change, and that's just the first severed connection peeving the locals. Also from tomorrow you have to be standing on the opposite side of the road to get to Hammersmith, and that's going to catch a lot of people out.
The fiveway junction at the Red Lion is where the bus to the London Wetland Centre bears off. Today this nigh pointless twiddle is undertaken by the 485 but from tomorrow it'll be poor sods on the 378 who deviate to the turning circle, pick up nobody and return to wait again at the traffic lights. The 533 instead turns right down Church Street, one of London's more bijou shopping enclaves as exemplified by a cafe called Brekky, a cafe called &Feast and the inevitable Gail's. About half our passengers alight here, which is going to be annoying for them from tomorrow when the number of buses connecting Castelnau to Church Street drops from ten an hour to just four. Worse still the number of buses heading onwards to Barnes station will drop from six an hour to zero because this is where 533's current loop is being broken. If nothing else it keeps TfL's accountants happy.
Chopping the 533 to create the new 209 means buses will now terminate beside Barnes Pond. TfL soothed nervous respondents to their consultation by confirming that "this turning manoeuvre has been successfully tested using a 10.8 metre bus" and "the bus standing at this location was not found to create any impediment to passing traffic", yet the sight of new electric vehicles parked beside this wildlife haven may still jar. At present the 533's one-way loop delivers us to Barnes station in two minutes flat. Tomorrow however you should absolutely not board the 209 here because that's doing the loop in the opposite direction, via Castelnau, with an increase in journey times "expected to be between 5 and 7 minutes". Never say TfL's consultations don't point out the downsides of the changes they introduce.
On Barnes High Street a 209 overtakes our 533, and is carrying zero passengers because that's how pointless this runty route currently is. Very soon we're on The Terrace, an exceptionally desirable arc of old cottages facing the Thames where Gustav Holst's prime property recently sold for £3.5million. We have now exited the 533 loop, the start of the four miles that isn't changing, so expect my route-related grumbling to ease soon. I must however first mutter about the two routes that feed in up Avondale Road, having just departed from Mortlake's quirkily tiny bus station. Currently one heads to Castelnau and the other towards Putney but from tomorrow both will go to Putney via very similar routes, a realignment TfL describe as "important" but which many residents think is ridiculous.
At St Mary's Church a Lipman-esque vision in straw hat and dark glasses steps aboard announcing "Thank you driver!", then grabs a copy of Metro and sits down to read it. We soon have at least 20 passengers on board which is either proof of pent-up demand or simply because there hasn't been a bus for ages. So far the journey's taken 15 minutes but that's about to go wrong as we join the queue of traffic waiting to pass through Chalkers Corner. Barely half a dozen vehicles get through on each green light so it takes us almost ten minutes to reach the cemetery, followed thankfully by a proper whizz across Chiswick Bridge. This is the first road crossing upstream of Hammersmith, such is the severance caused by a few cracks on a bridge, such is the vulnerability of west London's seeming interconnectedness.
The next jam starts way before the Hogarth Roundabout, towards which we crawl at a frustrating pace. It takes a full fifteen minutes to get there, a delay very definitely not in the timetable and sufficient disruption to have created the enormous gap in service experienced earlier. Along the way we stop near Chiswick School where a suspiciously large collection of summer students is waiting. They pile aboard in their branded sportswear and soon fill every last seat on the bus, also most of the standing space, as what I thought was going to be a quiet ride turns into a rush hour squeeze. When the mother from Castelnau seeks to alight it's a job to get her pram off, but at least we no longer have to listen to her baby bawling.
What follows is the express part of the route, a mile and a half down the Great West Road without a single bus stop. Well hurrah for that, I was losing the will to live. At the far end we reach the roundabout on the north side of Hammersmith Bridge, just a ten minute walk from where we were forty minutes ago, confirming the pointlessness of riding the 533 from end to end. Many passengers alight here because we're just round the back of the M&S Food Hall so this is ideal for the shops. The rest of us hang on to curl round into the bus station where the driver is very much looking forward to coming off shift. There isn't room to park straight so the old lady with the shopping basket finds herself having to step down to road level then back up onto the kerb. Another 533 is waiting to whisk passengers back to Castelnau but for god's sake don't do that, not unless you absolutely have to, and likewise don't take the restructured 209 from tomorrow.
None of this is ideal and much of it forced by a paucity of sturdy river crossings in the vicinity. But if you do live in Barnes or Castelnau my sincerest commiserations, because a broken bridge can really cut you off and TfL are about to make it even worse.
