Potters Bar in Hertfordshire and New Barnet in North London are just three miles away from each other. A car journey takes just 10 minutes along one straight road. For the past 109 years, there was a regular, direct bus service (route 84) between the two. But as of the start of this month, there isn’t. It’s a story slowly being repeated again and again across the capital, Waltham Abbey in Essex and Chingford in East London, Sevenoaks in Kent and Bromley in South London – busy transport corridors bus-less.
From this weekend, long-standing Arriva bus route 477 between Orpington in Bromley, South East London, and Bluewater in Kent will be trimmed down – with buses only running as far as Dartford (no longer serving Darent Valley Hospital and Bluewater Shopping Centre) and the Sunday service axed entirely. Transport for London (TfL)’s cross-border routes are being slimmed down too, with once hourly route 549 between Loughton in Essex and South Woodford in Redbridge, East London, recently revised down to one bus every 90 minutes with the last journeys around 7pm.
In each case there are some local factors that have amplified the cuts, but the issues ultimately come down to funding. As seen by TfL’s admission that it is ‘not in a position’ to save route 84, bus operators and transport authorities both in and out of London are facing rising costs due to energy price hikes, declining commuter numbers due to the rise in home working, and reduced funding from central government. TfL has no long-term funding deal and outside London, bus authorities and operators are now on the last tranche of Covid emergency funding, which runs out in October.
READ MORE: Every London bus route that has randomly changed numbers since 2000 and why
Route 84 used to run between New Barnet in North London and St Albans in Hertfordshire, now it only runs in Hertfordshire as the county council there did not want to subsidise the section to London and couldn’t get TfL to agree to either
(Image: Callum Marius)
It means that bus operators and transport authorities are scrambling to protect what bus services they have left by using as little of their own resources as possible to keep costs down. For routes that cross the London boundary, unless they are profitable, neither TfL nor the relevant Home County council is willing to risk their own resources for passengers it is not responsible for. Before the pandemic subsidised routes, routes such as the 350, 402 and 505 fell victim to this, with places on the very edge of London left without a regular bus service. Now in the midst of Covid restrictions ending and an economic crisis starting, more than the 84 could end up on the chopping block.
Two years ago, TfL considered chopping back cross-border route 258 from Watford in Hertfordshire to the first point outside London you could turn a bus around, Bushey Heath. It also announced plans to reduce the number of its routes that reach Bluewater in Kent, leading to online petitions expressing opposition, with TfL backtracking in 2020. It will have to consider the future of these routes again imminently as industry sources tell MyLondon a bus service review is part of the government conditions attached to TfL’s £5 billion funding deals that will take place as soon as this month. Any TfL route change would be subject to public consultation, however non-TfL commercial services can be de-registered entirely at the bus operator’s will without any consideration of public interest.
Bus Users UK, the bus passenger campaign to improve services across the country, outlined its concerns in its response to a review of the government’s national bus strategy (NBS): “Despite the promises of the NBS, bus funding is in crisis with the prospect of fewer rather than more and better services. A combination of rising costs and depressed demand means that services are untenable in all but the busiest corridors.
“An increasing number of services have been cut over the last ten years as LTA [local transport authority] budgets have shrunk, with some counties no longer funding any socially necessary services. The NBS was widely expected to return some of these services but that does not appear to have been the case.
“This is more than a matter of providing an alternative to the car: it has a real and negative impact on people’s lives, health and wellbeing.”
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