southwark to be given up to 10 million to improve buses

[Spartacus]

Saw this today, which is brilliant news for Southwark

https://southwarknews.co.uk/news/community/southwark-to-be-given-up-to-10-million-to-improve-buses/

I am amused that Lewisham are clear on what they are focusing on, but Southwark in the article aren't.

Wonder where the money will be spent and what suggestions, if you had £10 million to improve buses, you would spend it on.

[alice]

Please don’t say it’s going to be spent on a little green bus for Dulwich Village

[exdulwicher]

11 minutes ago, Spartacus said:

Wonder where the money will be spent and what suggestions, if you had £10 million to improve buses, you would spend it on.

24/7 bus lanes. Bus clearways and bus priority measures.

[Spartacus]

5 minutes ago, exdulwicher said:

24/7 bus lanes. Bus clearways and bus priority measures.

Where would you add the bus lanes? remembering its for the whole borough and not just ED 

[march46]

Brilliant news, well done Southwark!

24/7 bus lanes and bus priority measures will make the most difference imo.

[malumbu]

From the article:

The investment proposals include:

• New bus priority measures to improve journey times
• Better management of roadworks to reduce bus delays
• Bus stop improvements to make them more pleasant, safer places to wait and easier to change modes of transport
• Street improvements to make it easier and safer to walk to bus stops and stations

Wonder what improved bus stops means?  A roaring fire, a cocktail bar, chilled music??  Whatever (and I am just being cheeky) a vast improvements from my childhood where our bus stops were often enclosed and used as toilets.

[Spartacus]

9 minutes ago, malumbu said:

 

Wonder what improved bus stops means?  A roaring fire, a cocktail bar, chilled music??  Whatever (and I am just being cheeky) a vast improvements from my childhood where our bus stops were often enclosed and used as toilets.

Maybe they will be fitted with real loos so that the elderly can use buses more without the fear of getting caught short 🤔 

[Insuflo]

1 hour ago, malumbu said:

 

Wonder what improved bus stops means?  A roaring fire, a cocktail bar, chilled music??  

Something like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unst_Bus_Shelter

[CPR Dave]

Would rather they spent on there being more buses going to more useful places. 

Put the 40 back to the London Bridge route and extend it up to Islington.

Have a bus that goes down Lordship Lane and turns right on to the South Circular towards Clapham. 

Extend the 176 up to Regent's Park.

Extend the 185 up to Sloane Square. 

F**k tinkering around the edges with bus lanes and shelters - get some proper changes made with bus routes for the people.

[malumbu]

It's ten million not £500 million.  Whether you like it or not it is not for the above purpose. Most people seem to be pleased.

The new Superloop, if it goes ahead, will go to Clapham.  The P13 goes that way already.

[Earl Aelfheah]

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Edited November 21, 2025 by Earl Aelfheah

[NewWave]

1 hour ago, CPR Dave said:

Would rather they spent on there being more buses going to more useful places. 

Put the 40 back to the London Bridge route and extend it up to Islington.

Have a bus that goes down Lordship Lane and turns right on to the South Circular towards Clapham. 

Extend the 176 up to Regent's Park.

Extend the 185 up to Sloane Square. 

F**k tinkering around the edges with bus lanes and shelters - get some proper changes made with bus routes for the people.

I agree 100% the destinations of our local bus routes are a bit c**p.

 

[CPR Dave]

Extending those routes would cost about £450k per annum per route initially. 

So £10m would pay for it for 7 or so years, by which time the extensions might pay for themselves by being more useful.

[rollflick]

It's not about adding to bus routes rather the main spend is on bus priority, as otherwise the spiral of decline in inner London will continue, in other words further cuts to routes and frequencies. The aim is to cut journey times by 30%, so increasing average speed up from about 9mph to 12 mph, making buses more attractive as well as more economic to run.

Apparently Southwark is focusing on what's been termed the South London Busway: the corridor is E&C - Walworth Road - Denmark Hill - Lordship Lane. Other slow sections of bus routes in the borough are either red routes like Old Kent Road and Tower Bridge Road (so for TfL to deal with rather than Southwark) or low frequency (e.g. P13 squeezing through ever wider parked cars).

[exdulwicher]

11 hours ago, CPR Dave said:

Would rather they spent on there being more buses going to more useful places. 

Put the 40 back to the London Bridge route and extend it up to Islington.

Have a bus that goes down Lordship Lane and turns right on to the South Circular towards Clapham. 

Extend the 176 up to Regent's Park.

Extend the 185 up to Sloane Square. 

F**k tinkering around the edges with bus lanes and shelters - get some proper changes made with bus routes for the people.

You can't really have the first part without the last part.

The reason that so many bus routes got shortened a few years ago was that longer routes are far more prone to delays. A 5 min delay at the start can be magnified into a 20 min delay by the end on a 2-3hr journey from the suburbs up into central London which also starts impacting driver working hours and forcing driver changeovers which further delays the service. You also end up with a huge crush of buses all trying to go to Strand, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly etc. It's far more efficient to run shorter services, you need fewer buses (since they're being turned around quicker) which means you free up buses to increase the frequency, either on that route or a connecting route. The Hopper fare means you're still paying the same flat rate, you're not being charged twice but you simply can't have bus routes from everywhere to everywhere else, chances are you're going to have to change somewhere. 

If you want faster, more reliable services, you need the 24/7 bus lanes and bus priority lights. If you want more pleasant services (less crowded / more comfortable etc) you need fewer people per bus so higher frequency (therefore shorter routes) and nice safe waiting shelters with good quality info, lighting, CCTV etc.

That is invariably more important to more people than having a bus that goes door-to-door for every possible destination.

If you just add more buses to the mix, you end up with more buses stuck in traffic.

[Angelina]

A Barista Bus

[Spartacus]

What would be great would be returning the 12 to a 5-6 minute frequency, as it was before reduction in service was imposed during covid 

[CPR Dave]

2 hours ago, exdulwicher said:

It's far more efficient to run shorter services, you need fewer buses (

Yes, because fewer people use them. They'll just get in their cars instead.

[exdulwicher]

19 minutes ago, CPR Dave said:

Yes, because fewer people use them. They'll just get in their cars instead.

That's not what I said at all. 

If you have a route that takes one hour, and you want a bus every 6 minutes, you need 20 buses to service that route (in both directions). 
If you extend that route right up into town and it now takes 2hrs, you need 40 buses to maintain a 6-min service in both directions. That's very inefficient because very few people will use the route the full way. The very few people who do want to go the full distance would be better served by changing buses or some other option like bus/train or bus/tube.

You can run a much more efficient service by interchanging routes rather than trying to run every bus right to every possible destination.

And as the service becomes more efficient and reliable, more people use it because those are the two main metrics that people use when route planning - they want to know that the bus going to turn up and that the journey is going to be xx minutes (give or take a small percentage). Arguably, being on-time to a scheduled timetable doesn't matter much when you're running a 6-min service since you never have to wait more than 5.9 minutes. That efficiency is bolstered considerably by bus priority measures such as preferential transit through a junction, 24/7 clear lanes in busy areas and so on.

[CPR Dave]

 

Quote

when you're running a 6-min service since you never have to wait more than 5.9 minutes

You ignore the fact that passengers have to get off and wait another 5.9 minutes for the next bus. Might as well just have buses that go further at longer intervals. 

Perfect efficiency for bus routes isn't a more noble aim than the convenience of passengers using buses. And none of the suggestions I made would result in a bus route doubling from 1 hour to two hours.

[Glemham]

On 20/11/2025 at 18:37, alice said:

Please don’t say it’s going to be spent on a little green bus for Dulwich Village

I’m saddened by this response Alice as you usually post sensible comments.

Is this a response to the Dulwich Bus Campaign https://dulwichbuscampaign.co.uk  which aims to use an existing bus to improve connectivity between different parts of the Dulwich constituency, and in doing so highlights the shortcomings of the P4 bus. If so you haven’t seen our website and the petition which currently has close to 1,000 signatures, and is supported by several organisations across Dulwich.

I live close to Lordship Lane which is well served by buses that will take me directly to the centre of London in one direction and to Lewisham in the other. But if I want to travel to see friends in West Dulwich/Norwood or to use the shops and cinema there without using my car there is no direct bus that will get me there. I don’t want to, and cannot cycle because I am 80, and although I look quite fit and healthy for my age, I have a heart condition which means walking other than in the flat or for any length of time makes me tired for the rest of the day. Something that cycling enthusiasts don’t always recognise…..

I know that many people in West Dulwich/Norwood would like to come more often to Dulwich Village to support the Gallery, the shops which are struggling with a much reduced footfall and to work. This is what the Bus Campaign is working towards.

Oh and  if successful will link four local train stations which might help in ferrying around all the thousands of schoolchildren from across London who are being educated here!