Encouraging bus usage

[Spartacus]

I am amused by the BBC article today that TfL are spending £20 million to encourage more bus usage due to falling numbers.

BBC News - Sir Sadiq Khan spends £20m to encourage more bus trips - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx24j119d3mo

For £20, I can tell him the issues (and for £50 how to fix them)

1. Bus speeds are slower than ever, primarily caused by reducing the width of roads. This is like fatty deposits in your arteries, the narrower the route, the more congested it will become.  

2. Routes are being cut, changed or rerouted. This doesn't always allow passengers to get to their destination as quickly or as easy as before the changes so they may look for alternatives (no 40 is a prime example)

3. The damned "regulating the service" shinagans this has become the bain of passengers journeys, last week, in the morning rush hour, the driver had to tell people that it was a 15 minute wait.  Not great for getting anywhere (same applies for early terminations or being made to transfer) 

4. EBikes (not a moan) people are choosing to use them over walking or bus journeys. They don't work for all but short hops for the physically healthy rather than the bus are changing habits. (For now) 

5. Central London protests, whilst people have the right to protest, central London from the SE becomes virtually impossible to get to on Saturdays.

6. The obvious one, working patterns have changed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are now the busy bus days.

Will throwing money at "encouraging" people to use the bus work ? Or do some fundamental issues need to be resolved first ? 

 

 

[Earl Aelfheah]

15 minutes ago, Spartacus said:

6. The obvious one, working patterns have changed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are now the busy bus days.

This is the key point - Most people are only going into the office 2-3 days a week. It's not that surprising that fewer people are using the bus.

Agree with most of your other points. I would add that there has also been big increases in the numbers of people cycling to work / commuting. 

Yes, e-bikes are making it easier to connect to the tube and train for faster journey times and at the same time buses are getting slower.

The constant increase in average car sizes (many now exceeding the 1.8m width of typical on-street parking spaces) is also creating new bottlenecks and actively contributing to congestion. On many roads it's now difficult for two vehicles to pass each other without giving way to oncoming traffic.

Edited Monday at 11:37 by Earl Aelfheah

[Sue]

7 minutes ago, Spartacus said:

I am amused by the BBC article today that TfL are spending £20 million to encourage more bus usage due to falling numbers.

BBC News - Sir Sadiq Khan spends £20m to encourage more bus trips - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx24j119d3mo

For £20, I can tell him the issues (and for £50 how to fix them)

1. Bus speeds are slower than ever, primarily caused by reducing the width of roads. This is like fatty deposits in your arteries, the narrower the route, the more congested it will become.  

2. Routes are being cut, changed or rerouted. This doesn't always allow passengers to get to their destination as quickly or as easy as before the changes so they may look for alternatives (no 40 is a prime example)

3. The damned "regulating the service" shinagans this has become the bain of passengers journeys, last week, in the morning rush hour, the driver had to tell people that it was a 15 minute wait.  Not great for getting anywhere (same applies for early terminations or being made to transfer) 

4. EBikes (not a moan) people are choosing to use them over walking or bus journeys. They don't work for all but short hops for the physically healthy rather than the bus are changing habits. (For now) 

5. Central London protests, whilst people have the right to protest, central London from the SE becomes virtually impossible to get to on Saturdays.

6. The obvious one, working patterns have changed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are now the busy bus days.

Will throwing money at "encouraging" people to use the bus work ? Or do some fundamental issues need to be resolved first ? 

 

 

To be fair, whilst it's obviously extremely annoying to be stuck on a bus whose service is being regulated, if tfl didn't do this, people would still be complaining because they would wait ages for a bus and then several would arrive at once.

Traffic conditions may vary for all sorts of reasons, some which can be predicted in advance but also some which can't, and if a bus catches up with the one in front but the one behind it is on its predicted schedule, there would be a very long gap between the second and third buses.

[Spartacus]

1 minute ago, Sue said:

To be fair, whilst it's obviously extremely annoying to be stuck on a bus whose service is being regulated, if tfl didn't do this, people would still be complaining because they would wait ages for a bus and then several would arrive at once.

Traffic conditions may vary for all sorts of reasons, some which can be predicted in advance but also some which can't, and if a bus catches up with the one in front but the one behind it is on its predicted schedule, there would be a very long gap between the second and third buses.

That doesn't help those on a bus, trying to get somewhere. It just makes everyone groan and mumble.

The 15 minutes last week was caused, according to the driver, by him running exactly to time but the bus behind was cancelled so the controller wanted to reduce the gap. Mad thing was the bus was only 7 stops from the terminus, so why not wait till then to regulate it? 

[Penguin68]

Another real problem is road works, with buses being delayed or diverted. As a traveller I need to choose routes with some certainty, buses are not at the moment, and for some time, a good choice for that. And there seems no coordination or planning for even 'planned'  works. And no encouragement from fiscal penalties to do these fast 

[Sue]

On 02/03/2026 at 11:39, Spartacus said:

That doesn't help those on a bus, trying to get somewhere. It just makes everyone groan and mumble.

The 15 minutes last week was caused, according to the driver, by him running exactly to time but the bus behind was cancelled so the controller wanted to reduce the gap. Mad thing was the bus was only 7 stops from the terminus, so why not wait till then to regulate it? 

Surely there would be no point doing it at the terminus,  because nobody would be getting on a bus in that direction there? They would only be getting off 

Whereas some people  might well be wanting a bus to go one to seven stops.

[exdulwicher]

On 02/03/2026 at 11:21, Spartacus said:

I am amused by the BBC article today that TfL are spending £20 million to encourage more bus usage due to falling numbers.

BBC News - Sir Sadiq Khan spends £20m to encourage more bus trips - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx24j119d3mo

To be fair, some of it is not "spending" as such, it's subsidy to create demand-led fares (lower fares on less popular times / routes) and lower cost / free travel for some. Liverpool for example have a free bus pass for carers so options to replicate that. 

On 02/03/2026 at 11:21, Spartacus said:

1. Bus speeds are slower than ever, primarily caused by reducing the width of roads. This is like fatty deposits in your arteries, the narrower the route, the more congested it will become.  

That's kind of half right. It's more to do with road space allocation than simply "narrowing a road". If you narrow a road but make it a 24/7 bus lane, speed and reliability dramatically increase. If you widen a pavement to make better public realm, you have more space for people, more potential bus passengers and more space to put a safe and convenient bus stop. The critical point is that having a narrow(er) road isn't necessarily bad providing that there are complementary measures such as off-street parking / proper car parks and clear bus priority routes.

On 02/03/2026 at 11:21, Spartacus said:

2. Routes are being cut, changed or rerouted. This doesn't always allow passengers to get to their destination as quickly or as easy as before the changes so they may look for alternatives (no 40 is a prime example)

One of the main problems with bus speeds is that there are far too many buses all getting in each others way! This is especially true up in town - if you have buses from all over outer London all converging in the same 2sq miles, it's gridlock. You literally cannot run every bus all the way up to town, there have to be changes in certain locations (Camberwell and Elephant & Castle being the notable ones between Dulwich and town). With a frequent enough connecting service, this isn't the end of the world and the Hopper fare means it doesn't cost any more (that's another example of subsidy, it's effectively two journeys for the price of one). It also encourages people to consider multi-modal options such as bus half way then tube / hire bike etc which in turn contributes to lower ridership. 

It's a difficult balance to get right. 

Re the working day changes, TfL did experiment a while ago with lower rail fares on Friday in an effort to encourage office workers to spread themselves out over 5 days rather than 3 or 4. It didn't really work!

[CPR Dave]

The hopper fare is pointless if they're "regulating the service" or changing drivers and making you wait at a random bus stop nowhere near your interchange.