London Buses

Every day on my way to work I decide to get off of the tube one stop early and walk to my office. This provides me with about an extra 15-20 minutes of walking and I consider it some valuable exercise. I am usually doing this walk in the environs of Oxford Street at about 8:30am. Over the last few weeks I have been observing the buses as I walk to work, this being a fairly busy part of London with one imagines lots of people starting work around there at 9:00 or thereabouts. The curious thing I have noticed is the number of buses that have relatively few passengers. Now along my route there are a wide variety of different number bus, so clearly they are following different routes and coming from and going to different places and yet bus after bus is severely underoccupied. The other day in point of fact I noticed within 5 or so minutes down the same stretch of road two buses of the same route, both of them were double-decker buses, one had 2 passengers on it the other had no passengers visible on it. So this was one bus with the driver and cost thereof, all the fuel and cost thereof, all the pollution and cost thereof with no passengers.

Now clearly one cannot draw full conclusions from the rather prosaic and anecdotal evidence I have outlined, however I think that there could well be a case for looking at the servicing of routes. If we have within minutes of each other buses following the same route and carrying a combined number of passengers that would fit comfortably onto just the one bus it might be worth just taking a look. Obviously there may be portions of the route that are more in demand, and what I am seeing is not representative of the whole story. That would be a perfectly fair thing to suggest, and I would be prepared to accept that, however I think that when one of the largest bus fleets in western Europe is being talked about we need to be confident that it is being used most effectively. 

I would urge whoever wins London’s Mayoral election to instigate a review of bus routes and service provision. It is essential that we are not supplying buses where there is no demand, because it could be at the expense of fuelling demand where there is no supply. We need to have a bus service that is responsive and that is most effectively deployed. I would also suggest that whilst none of us would want to use an overcrowded bus most of us would be more than happy if we didn’t have an entire bus deck to ourselves. I think that a fullscale route review would be beneficial and that a periodic fullscale review should be instigated to ensure that London’s buses are always most effectively deployed. It is no good happily supplying yesterday’s demand whilst today’s goes unsupplied, and tomorrow’s is not even thought about. Over time usage patterns must change and the Mayor of London needs to ensure that the service pattern is as well matched to usage as can be acheived.