Central London Bus Review

Update 8 August 2022

Our Central London Bus Review consultation has now closed. Thank you to everyone that responded. We are now considering the feedback we received and aim to publish our consultation report and next steps later in the year.

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Update 28 June 2022

We have extended the closing date for this consultation from 12 July 2022 to Sunday 7 August 2022.

Interest in this consultation has remained exceptionally high after the first four weeks of consultation. We appreciate that customers, communities and stakeholders who are only now starting to review our consultation materials may need more time to review, understand and provide feedback on our proposed changes. For this reason, and to ensure people have adequate time to respond, the consultation, will now close at midnight on Sunday 7 August 2022.

Thank you to everyone that has already responded to the consultation. If this is the case, then no further action is required. Your comments have been gratefully received and recorded, and do not need to be resubmitted.

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Proposed changes to bus routes into central London

Summary of route changes

TfL’s reliance on customer fares for the majority of its income means the effect of the pandemic on our finances has been devastating, requiring Government support to keep public transport in London operating. Customer numbers have begun to recover, but are still significantly below pre-pandemic levels.

The Government set a number of conditions before it would provide emergency funding to enable TfL to keep operating, including requiring us to produce a plan to set out how we would achieve significant financial savings. This plan included reducing the extent of our bus network.

Buses are the backbone of our transport network and are critically important to reducing car use, congestion, road danger and pollution. We have always adjusted our bus network to reflect our changing city, but the devastating impact of the pandemic on our finances has required a more significant review.

Our plan to achieve the savings required by the Government includes a 4% reduction in bus kilometres. Demand has reduced over the years on some roads leading into central and inner London due to changing travel patterns, which have been accelerated by the pandemic. In response to this and the savings we have been required to make, we are consulting on changes to some bus routes in and around central London.

We are consulting on withdrawing some individual bus routes or sections of routes where they are covered by other high-frequency services or are close to alternative stops. These proposals aim to ensure we still have a strong bus service to support London’s economic recovery, while simplifying the network to ensure buses are operating frequently and reliably in the areas that need them most. The changes being consulted on are intended to cause as little disruption to passengers as possible, while making the required savings. The Hopper Fare will continue to allow customers to change between buses within 60 minutes of starting journeys without having to pay more.

Route details 

All the proposed changes have been arranged into ‘neighbourhoods’ of north, east, south and west London to provide a picture of how the bus network in that area would change. These ‘neighbourhoods’ are shown below.

Click on the 'neighbourhood' title below to download the proposals. Click here to view consultation maps

You can also visit the ‘Documents’ section to your right to:

• Look at 'neighbourhood' and night bus proposals in detail
• View consultation maps showing current and proposed bus routes
• Access Easy Read versions of our proposals and our survey
• Download a survey to print and post back to us
• Read our initial Equality Impact Assessments (EqIA)
• Read more about why we are proposing these changes
• Download a copy of our bus stop poster
• Download a copy of our Bus Action Plan

From week commencing Monday 20 June you can access British Sign Language video, including audio.

Route details by neighbourhood

North London area

1. Baker Street including changes to routes 31, 113, and 189 in Camden and Westminster
2. Caledonian Road including changes to routes 254, 259, 279, and 349 in Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, and Islington
3. Edgware Road including changes to routes 6, 16, 23, and 98 in Westminster, Camden, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham
4. Euston Road including changes to routes 24, 88, 205, and 214 in Camden, Westminster, City of London, Islington, and Tower Hamlets

South London area

1. Coldharbour Lane including changes to routes 45 and 59 in Lambeth and Southwark
2. Horseferry Road including changes to routes 3, 77, 507 and C10 in Westminster and Lambeth
3. Walworth Road including changes to routes 12 and 148 in Southwark, Lambeth, Westminster, and Hammersmith and Fulham
4. Waterloo including changes to routes 53, 59, 133, 171, and 521 in Westminster, City of London, Southwark, Lambeth, and Camden

East London area

1. Commercial Street including changes to routes 15, 135, and 242 in City of London, Hackney, and Tower Hamlets
2. Essex Road including changes to routes 4, 56, 236, and 476 in Islington, City of London, Haringey, Camden, and Hackney
3. Fleet Street including changes to routes 11, 26, 211, and 507 in City of London, Westminster, Lambeth, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham
4. Isle of Dogs and Wapping including changes to routes D3, D7, D8, 100, 135, and 277 in Tower Hamlets, City of London, and Hackney
5. London Bridge and Tower Bridge including changes to routes 43, 47, 78, 343, and 388 in City of London, Hackney, Southwark, Lewisham, and Tower Hamlets

West London area

1. Earls Court including changes to routes 27, 328 and C3 in Hammersmith and Fulham, Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea
2. South Kensington including changes to routes 14, 19, 49, 72, 74, 272, 283, 414, and 430 in Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth, Hammersmith and Fulham, Westminster, Hounslow, and Ealing

Where customer demand for buses can be covered by other services, we propose to withdraw the following bus routes:

4, 11, 12*, 14*, 16, 24*, 31, 45, 72, 74, 78, 242, 349, 521, C3, D7, N11, N16, N31, N72, N74, and N242 (*24 hour routes)

Have your say

We are holding a public consultation to hear what you think about these proposals.

Once you have read more about our proposals, please share your views by taking part in our online survey. It should take you no more than 15 minutes to complete.

We would like you to tell us how our proposals may impact you and to learn more about what we could do to make potential changes easier for customers. Your views are important to us and will help us with our decision-making.

We want this consultation to be accessible to everyone. There is an Easy Read version of our proposal in the ‘Documents’ section. There is also an Easy Read version of our survey.

In the bottom right-hand corner of this page, there is a British Sign Language video which includes audio.

If you need to translate this page into another language, please use the ‘Select language’ button in the bottom-left hand corner of this page.

How these proposals might change your journey

Some customers may gain new journey options under these proposals, meaning the bus could become a more attractive option to them.

We also recognise that some customers may be adversely affected by these proposals and want to minimise the impact of this as much as possible. In particular, we want to understand any impacts on those of our customers with protected characteristics, so that we can ensure those are taken into account together with our equality objectives and mitigated where possible.

We expect our proposals may result in the following changes:

• Currently, around 19% of bus journeys made on central London bus routes involve a change of bus. Under our proposals, we expect this to increase to 24%. We expect that in many instances this would be at no extra cost to customers due to the Hopper fare, but we are aware that some customers (including those with protected characteristics) may, in some circumstances, need to pay a second time for their journey
• As part of our proposals, some new direct journey possibilities would also be possible. This would remove the need to change bus to complete a journey and decrease overall journey times for some customers
• Some customers may need to take a differently-numbered route to complete their journey, or may find their service frequency changes
• Some bus interchanges may involve moving between stops, and this may present accessibility issues for some customers. These and any other issues identified by our Equality Impact Assessments will be carefully considered together with our equality objectives

For many customers, there would be no change.

We are already working to manage and mitigate against potential impacts where journeys may change. Ongoing or planned work that aims to enhance bus services for existing and new customers includes:

• Minimising any additional waiting time where customers do need to change buses (for example by ensuring connecting services operate at a relatively high frequency or by aiming to ensure same-stop interchange or minimal walking distances between stops)
• Reviewing bus stop and street design and layouts in locations where changing bus at the same stop is not possible (e.g. providing new or improved crossings)
• Improving the customer experience at bus stops and shelters - especially where we expect higher levels of interchange. This could include new bus shelters with improved lighting, wayfinding, and customer information (such as the new real-time digital information displays being trialled on bus route 63)
• Improving customer information on the bus, the TfL website and the TfL Go app to provide customers with real-time journey planning and information about how to interchange between bus routes and other services
• New Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion training for bus drivers, which is being developed in partnership with a specialist training provider and will help drivers to provide even better assistance to customers who need it most
• Continuing to deliver a range of measures that reduce bus delays and improve customer journey times (known as bus priority). We are working to enhance journey times, including through creating permanent 24/7 bus lanes on the Transport for London Road Network following a successful trial, using technology to give more green time to buses at traffic lights and continuing to support and encourage boroughs to deliver bus priority measures on their roads. Reducing journey times will both attract new customers and increase the services we can run with our available resources

Equality Impact Assessment 

We have undertaken an Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA) for each neighbourhood affected by the proposals. The EqIA identifies and examines in more detail what positive and negative impacts these proposals may have on individuals with protected characteristics together with our equality objectives and how we propose to mitigate any negative impacts. These impacts and mitigations will be taken into account as part of the decision-making process on the proposals. The EqIA will be kept under review and updated to reflect any relevant new information, including information which comes in as part of the consultation process.

The full version of the current EqIA for each ‘neighbourhood’ of proposals can be found in the ‘Documents’ section. We hope that, through this consultation, we can hear more of your views. Your views will help ensure we are doing all we can to identify any issues raised that we have not already thought about and mitigate against them, to the extent that we reasonably can.

Please complete our survey to let us know what else we need to consider.

What’s next?

These proposals are subject to the outcome of our consultation. Once consultation ends on 7 August 2022, we will spend time considering all the responses we receive and will prepare a consultation report.

The consultation report will help us reach a decision about how bus routes into central London may change.

A copy of the consultation report will be available to everyone that takes part in the consultation and a copy will be published on our website.