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Trivia: Furthest TFL Bus route from London?
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I bet that isent all the way from london . In london ive noticed routes dont go from one end of the city to the other . there is a reason , london has the tube .
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Galvanize
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405 West Croydon-Redhill
465 Kingston-Dorking
westcoaster
Established Member
84 Barnet - st albans.
Neilandrewhall
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westcoaster
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Do not know that one but I know the longest tfl route is the x26 from croydon to heathrow airport, in the past it used to continue toward Essex, iirc grqvesend/dartford.
Oracle
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I was told by a neighbour who was an RT driver at Turnham Greem Garage that the 65 Ealing Broadway-Leatherhead was so long that there was just time for two trips. On the run down past Chessington Zoo he used to place a brick on the pedal to ease hise foot!
causton
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Beat me too it
Not technically a TfL route, operated under a Local London Service Agreement (which the 614 Queensbury-Hatfield was on as well until last month) and it only accepts Oyster cards up to Potters Bar. (Of course, the drivers were complete ****s and never accepted child Oyster cards outside of London for some bizarre reason - at least not without me refusing to get off the bus because I had paid the fare!)
But yes, it's sort of a London route... (also explains why the buses have LED blinds
)Uno no longer accept Oyster or Travelcards on the 614. Does anyone know why? They operate in London and it seems silly, but it must come down to how they were paid?
Still, Uno is anything but a proper bus company - as I've mentioned in other threads. They have policies that are totally against how you'd run a bus company. It should NOT be company policy to allow drivers to leave a bus stop 3 minutes early (in practice, it can be 5), or skip stops completely if the bus is empty and the driver doesn't think anyone is likely to want to get on further along... Uno drivers also claim they want to stop accepting plusBUS tickets. That would be all fine and dandy if they were JUST for students as was originally the case, but they've won most of the contracts from Arriva and have a virtual monopoly in Hatfield, St Albans and Welwyn Garden City.
Still, Uno is anything but a proper bus company - as I've mentioned in other threads. They have policies that are totally against how you'd run a bus company. It should NOT be company policy to allow drivers to leave a bus stop 3 minutes early (in practice, it can be 5), or skip stops completely if the bus is empty and the driver doesn't think anyone is likely to want to get on further along... Uno drivers also claim they want to stop accepting plusBUS tickets. That would be all fine and dandy if they were JUST for students as was originally the case, but they've won most of the contracts from Arriva and have a virtual monopoly in Hatfield, St Albans and Welwyn Garden City.
Surreytraveller
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Isn't the 84 a special case - its only TfL between Potters Bar and High Barnet, the rest is commercial / Hertfordshire CC? In which case the 402 Bromley to Tunbridge Wells could count - that's supported by TfL to the boundary.
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Gravesend and Dartford are in Kent. The other way it used to go to Windsor.
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X68 to West Croydon must be a contender, without including night buses?
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tripleseis
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81 Hounslow to Slough is entirely TfL run and even has LT Roundel stops along the entire route!
258 and 142 both run into Watford which is outside TfL's area, but the bus stops become Herts CC stops once in Bushey. The routes don't go very far outside Greater London though.
258 and 142 both run into Watford which is outside TfL's area, but the bus stops become Herts CC stops once in Bushey. The routes don't go very far outside Greater London though.
113 Marble Arch to Edgware must be a contender! Edgware is probably one of the only outer suburbs in Greater London that has a regular direct bus route into Central London.
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I would think that Dorking is probably the furthest outpost of any TfL routes. (As has been said, the 84 to St Albans doesn't count, as it isn't a TfL route). Tatsfield (or Passingford Bridge) may feel more remote, but in terms of distance from London they are a lot closer.
This (unofficial, and generally fairly reliable) website gives details of all bus routes in the Greater London area, including length of route to the nearest km and nearest mile
http://www.londonbusroutes.net/details.htm
(http://www.londonbusroutes.net/routes.htm clarifies more explictly which ones are not TfL)
A quick glance suggests that the X26 is indeed the longest TfL route, at 34km/21 miles. Although it is limited-stop (and the successor of a Green Line coach route, the 726),so that is, perhaps to be expected.
X68 may well be the longest daytime route from central London. The 113 to Edgware and 25 to Ilford (both of which are regular, all-day, non-express, i.e stoppng at every stop) are possibly the next longest from central London, but I'm not certain, and what exactly constitutes "central London" probably needs to be clarified before making such a statement! Although both of those kind of/almost serve a part of Oxford Street.
This (unofficial, and generally fairly reliable) website gives details of all bus routes in the Greater London area, including length of route to the nearest km and nearest mile
http://www.londonbusroutes.net/details.htm
(http://www.londonbusroutes.net/routes.htm clarifies more explictly which ones are not TfL)
A quick glance suggests that the X26 is indeed the longest TfL route, at 34km/21 miles. Although it is limited-stop (and the successor of a Green Line coach route, the 726),so that is, perhaps to be expected.
X68 may well be the longest daytime route from central London. The 113 to Edgware and 25 to Ilford (both of which are regular, all-day, non-express, i.e stoppng at every stop) are possibly the next longest from central London, but I'm not certain, and what exactly constitutes "central London" probably needs to be clarified before making such a statement! Although both of those kind of/almost serve a part of Oxford Street.
Surreytraveller
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Tatsfield is literally a stone's throw from the GLA boundary! Dorking probably is the furthest outpost in the proper sense of a fully funded TfL route, with respect as to the distance from the GLA boundary. Both the 84 and 402 are partially funded, as they accept TfL tickets up to a point.
I do not know how to define Central London from a bus point of view, as the London bus network is no longer divided into zones - a few years ago I may have suggested anything within zone 1, which would have included buses serving the elephant, so could be the 468 to South Croydon?
317 forever
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Another contender would be route 25 from Tottenham Court Road (was Oxford Circus before the Crossrail upheaval) to Ilford, which is postally in Essex.
Also route 18 from Euston to Sudbury.
EM2
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I wondered about the 25. What about the N8, from Oxford Circus to Hainault?
I do know of buses that run as far out as Harold Wood and theres a 607 to Uxbridge which is quite far out i guess. Also there is a 200 and something im sure of that runs to Basildon?
Well, Harold Wood is still in Greater London....
There's definitely no TfL buses to Basildon! Don't think there ever have been - not even sure when London Country was part of London Transport that Basildon had any of their routes: it was then (and until 1986) strictly Eastern National territory (after 1986 London Country NE did for a time have an Essex CC contract for route 403 from Romford to Basildon via West Horndon).
There's a TfL school bus route that goes out to Shenfield I think - that would probably be the furthest point in Essex served by one. Brentwood presumably the furthest into Essex that now has regular TfL buses (route 498)
Yes, there are 2 TfL routes to Lakeside - the 370 from Romford, and 372 from Hornchurch; Dorking is still surely further from the centre of London though
(Surreytraveller, my point about Tatsfield is that, when you're there, it doesn't feel like you are just over the border from Greater London, even though you are. It's really rural)
Oracle
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The 65 was replaced by the 71 to Leatherhead, and now that;'s cut back to Chessington World of Adventures. The 65 just goes to Kingston.
The N9 Aldwych to Heathrow T5 is I believe the longest route from "Central" London (every 20 minutes every night along the full length of the route).
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I don't think either of these services are "supported" as such by TfL - they receive a certain amount per ticket sold but if they don't take any TfL tickets they don't get any money.
The 84 is an odd one - it was an old London Transport route but when London buses was being privatised it was registered commercially rather than being tendered out - if anyone knows why I'd be interested in knowing. this does mean it's rather less frequent within London (and finishes earlier) than other similar services.
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At night the 65 runs along the route of the 71 as well to Chessington (currently curtailed to Copt Gilders estate due to work on a rail bridge in Chessington).
Unlike other routes which differ at night it does not use the N-prefix.
I suspect the principal reason is that the overwhelming majority of the route is outside Greater London, meaning that it wasn't (and isn't) deemed to be part of LT's remit (or, rather, that of Council tax payers in Greater London) to support it. (Most other routes in that situation, until the last 10 years or so, were generally operated by former National Bus Company group companies, or their successors, and not by LT. Those LT routes that went outside Greater London - like the 81 to Slough - with a few exceptions - generally also served a fair bit of Greater London).
The other thing is: despite its long history as one (and indeed as a red bus route that ran from St Albans to a lot further into London than just Barnet), the 84 wasn't actually a LT route when the whole tendering and deregulation thing got underway, or for a few years prior to that.
The 84 was transferred from LT to London Country in 1982. I'm not quite sure on what basis (the current tendering regime didn't exist then: the first transfer of LT routes to private operators on contracts was in 1985, and deregulation of buses outside of Greater London occured in Oct. 1986. I don't know is some funding from Hertfordshire County Council would have been involved). I seem to recall reading at the same time it was "swapped" with the 313 (Chingford-Potters Bar), formerly a London Country route, which then became a red-bus LT route for the first time. (although London Country won the tender to operate it when it was one of the first LT routes to be tendered out a bit later)
I'm also not sure when, why or how the 84 got red buses again. Although I would guess it was at deregulation. (Potters Bar garage also ran other "commercial" routes mostly or entirely outside Greater London, like the old LT route 242 from Potters Bar to Waltham Abbey via Cuffley and Northaw)
It's not too bad. Of the 100+ night routes (and 24-hour routes) in London only 2 don't run at least half hourly every night. those two (N28, N31) do run half hourly at weekends and interwork so part of the routes are served half hourly all week.
At least London has nightbuses and so does Edinburgh . Glasgow dosent.
Surreytraveller
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Quite a few routes were transferred from LT to London Country in Surrey at about that time - 164 became the 418, 80 the 420, 280 the 422, various routes out of Kingston. They must have been cheaper to farm out to the NBC operator, as inside London LT didn't take over the large number of London Country routes still operating!
313103
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For many years the Sunday version of the 159 which was the 59 Sundays Only use to run West Hampstead to Old Coulsdon. I remember the 27 use to go from Archway Station to Teddington Station. The 14 on summer sundays use to run between Hornsey Rise and Hampton Court Palace.
Virtually every route in London is a shadow of its former self. This has more to do with the break up of London buses and the companies being based on geographical areas and the routes being only run by one garage and one company rather then 2,3 or 4 garages being spread in what would now be 2,3 04 companies.
This has more to do with congestion getting worse - most routes which have been split have been trying to avoid congestion in one area affecting places miles away on the other side of London (see also Nottingham as a prime example of this which used to be full of cross-city routes). The individual bus companies in London do not decide where the routes are going to run.
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