Route 310: Golders Green - Stamford Hill Length of journey: 7 miles, 45 minutes
London's newest bus route, which launched yesterday, is a proper oddity. It was promised during the Mayoral election. It shadows two existing bus routes. It's being delivered on a twelve-month trial basis. It runs every day but not all of the day. It tackles one very specific instance of anti-semitism. It exists solely because of a low bridge at Finsbury Park. And it was introduced on a Sunday, which is unheard of. So there's lot to unpack here.
For over 15 years Jewish community leaders have beencampaigning for a bus route to connect Golders Green and Stamford Hill, two of London's largest strictly Orthodox populations. Travelling by train is convoluted and no existing direct bus route exists, hence the request for a new link. The previous best option was to take route 210 from Golders Green to Finsbury Park, walk under the railway bridge and board a 253 or 254 to Stamford Hill on the other side. But the road beneath the station is unpleasant and, more importantly, passengers making the journey have suffered antisemitic abuse while waiting for the next bus. Hence the introduction of new route 310 which goes all the way, this because it's a single decker so can nip safely under the bridge... and now the only question is "is it worth it?"
The thing about the 310 is that it's essentially exactly the same as the existing 210 for five whole miles - every stop identical. The 310 isn't even attempting to be an express, like the Superloop, it's just three extra journeys every hour along an existing route. Its only unique section is the 100m beneath the low bridge, which it turns out it does very inefficiently, before continuing to Stamford Hill along an already well served corridor. Other than the new connection it's strategically pointless, but that new connection is potentially important.
Brent Cross
Golders Green
Highgate
Archway
Finsbury Park
Stamford Hill
210
double decker (every 10 mins)
310
single decker (every 20 mins)
1½ miles
5 miles
1½ miles
If you plan to take a ride from Golders Green, TfL are keen to tell you about the new bus. There's a poster in the ticket hall, a poster by the bike rack and a poster by the assistance window, all saying a new route starts on Sunday 1 September and runs every 20 minutes from 7am to 7pm. But what the muppets haven't said is where it leaves from, because it turns out there are ten possible bus stops scattered across a wide area and no clue has been provided as to which one you want.
Excuse me while I have a bit of a rant.
Golders Green is one of London's busiest bus interchanges, served by a phenomenal sixteen different routes. Some depart from the bus station, some behind the cafe, some round the corner and some even further away by the railway bridge. And yet if you arrive off a train there's nothing to say which bus leaves from where, not for the 310 nor any other route, because the bus/train interface is apparently unimportant. Once upon a time a spider map was provided but inexplicably it was scrapped by a pennypinching managerial bastard without considering the befuddling informational desert its absence would create. Even the recently-blogged insignificant suburb of Poverest still has a spider map, but not Golders Green station because it doesn't meet some miserable jobsworth's set of 'criteria', so if you don't already know that the 460 leaves from the other side of the bridge nobody's going to tell you. A lot of bus stations instead display less helpful summary maps merely matching stops to termini, but here only one out-of-date copy exists and that's in a supplementary bus shelter beyond the toilets, whereas the ticket hall and all ten bus stops are mapless. Route 310, it turns out, departs from bus stop GJ outside the bus station, as I eventually discovered after much traipsing, and basically Golders Green is a bus signage disaster zone because somebody somewhere at TfL doesn't give a damn about the passenger wayfinding experience.
In good news the 310 was being well used when I took a ride along the route yesterday. At least a dozen people boarded at the first stop, most of whom appeared to be genuine passengers rather than spods who'd turned up out of curiosity. A proper timetable had been posted on the bus stop panel, indeed this looked to be the case all along the route, and I was pleased to see The Men Who Switch The Tiles had done an equally comprehensive job. The vehicle we boarded looked like it had been out of service for a while because the only adverts were for a Netflix movie released in 2021 and a missive about 'Why You Must Wear A Face Covering On Public Transport', but it was perfectly serviceable and off we sped up the hill towards Jack Straw's Castle.
A few passengers risked flagging us down, not always because they'd seen the 310 notice at the bus stop, more a cautious wave and then pleasure when they discovered we were going to the same places as the 210. Peculiarly the announcements aboard the bus all said "route three one oh" whereas on the parallel bus it's always been "route two ten" so make of that what you will. The most pleasant part of the route is the zip across the top of Hampstead Heath and the squeeze at The Spaniards Inn before weaving between the lovely shops of Highgate Village, although you get a much better view if you catch the 210 instead because that's a double decker.
At the foot of the long descent into Archway the driver pulled over and played the dreaded "the driver has been told to wait at this stop to even out the service" message, because this is a plague even on day one of an untested operation. Technically we were indeed two minutes early, but if the rationale is to deliver folk from Golders Green to Stamford Hill then this wasn't actually helping. A couple of young lads hopped off at this point, one pausing his recording of the journey and then kneeling to get a better shot of the bus pulling away, the other clearly wishing his brother wasn't quite such a massive nerd.
The lucky folk who live near Elthorne Park are also the beneficiaries of a 50% boost to their local bus service, even if not yet keen to embrace it. But as we bore off down Hornsey Rise another group of young aficionados boarded with Zip cards in hand, such is the Day 1 allure of a brand new route. One passed round the Pringles and another reminded his protégés that the 310 used to run from Enfield to Hertford but was cut back to Waltham Cross in 2006 freeing up the route number to be used again inside Greater London. If your mental picture of bus enthusiasts is greying men with no fashion sense, perhaps you should be thinking instead of Air Jordans, noise-cancelling headphones and back to school on Tuesday.
Now for the low bridge bit, which as I've already hinted is suboptimal. The last stop before the low bridge is at Tollington Park, over 500m from Finsbury Park station, where one poor lady lugging two very heavy bags boarded expecting to be dropped off by the station entrance. No such luck, because the 310 can't do what every other double decker does and pull in at the Wells Terrace bus station because that's laid out as a terminus. Neither is there a bus stop by the railway bridge because there's never needed to be, plus the cycle lane would get in the way, so instead she had to stay aboard until we reached the gates to Finsbury Park (the park) and then lug her bags back.
It's arguably worse in the opposite direction as the 310 has to do a big loop round the one-way system, then can't take a short cut through the bus station, and all because the roads round here have never been laid out with the expectation that a bus would ever go under the bridge. The important thing, it turns out, is never to board the 310 if you actually want to go to Finsbury Park station because it sails past, a lesson I suspect a lot of passengers will learn the hard way.
For the final 1½ miles the 310 is just another bus to Stamford Hill, and because it actually says 'Stamford Hill' on the blind this makes it quite popular. Along the way it ticks off Manor House station, the New River and all those new flats that've shot up at Woodbury Down before drawing to a halt in the heart of Stamford Hill. It was very busy here yesterday because Sunday's not a day of rest for an Orthodox Jewish community, indeed I wonder if the 310 was launched on a Sunday rather than the usual Saturday because a Sabbath debut would have been gauche.
I can confirm that my journey took a few minutes longer than the timetable panel at the the start of the journey had suggested, and a few minutes less than the timetable the driver was trying to stick to. I can also confirm that not a single passenger other than me travelled all the way from Golders Green to Stamford Hill, suggesting that the need for a bus service connecting the two locations might have been exaggerated... or else it's very early days. Route 310 is only running as a 12 month trial, so if it turns out not to have been a success TfL can always say "well look, we tried" before ultimately scrapping it. But if it helps to bridge the gap at Finsbury Park and boost safe travel then this peculiar route may become a permanent fixture across North London.
