Buses in London
[4][5] Buses have been used on the streets of London since 1829, when George Shillibeer started operating his horse-drawn omnibus service from Paddington to the City.
After the First World War, many demobilised soldiers had learned to operate and maintain heavy vehicles like buses and established bus companies.
In 1922, the Chocolate Express ran its first services, and many other independent operators entered the market until by 1924, the market was saturated with small independent bus companies which depressed patronage from established railways and larger bus companies – the worst affected being the London County Council's tramways which ran at a deficit.
Management's efforts to control costs lead to a strike across the whole network, which was shortly followed by the major bus companies and railways in London.
In 1924, under the London Traffic Act, the Metropolitan Police was authorised to allocate route numbers, which all buses had to carry.
[13] This ultimately led to chaos, and in the London Passenger Transport Act 1933 the power to allocate route numbers was taken away from the police and handed once again to professional busmen.
However, in 1969, a new law transferred the green country services, outside the area of the Greater London Council, to the recently formed National Bus Company.
[23] From 1985, bus routes were gradually tendered out to private companies, with London Buses split into business units from 1989.
[27][28] In 2024, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan pledged to bring bus routes back into public ownership as contracts expire.
[34][35] The fall in ridership was mitigated by the introduction of the hopper fare in 2018, which allowed passengers to make multiple bus journeys within 1 hour.
[41] Following withdrawal of older, high floor vehicles, the bus fleet became fully accessible at the end of 2005, 10 years ahead of the national requirement.
Johnson was elected to office on 4 May 2008, and on 4 July 2008 Transport for London announced the New Bus for London Competition,[43] in which conceptual and detailed design proposals would be sought for a new hybrid Routemaster, with development of a design that could be put into production hoped for completion by 2012 (the expected date of the next mayoral election).
[40] In August 2008, the Commissioner of Transport for London Peter Hendy announced that the withdrawal of the bendy buses would take place, starting in 2009.
[47] The buses, designed by Heatherwick Studio and built by Wrightbus[48] feature two staircases, three doors and an open platform allowing passengers to hop on and off, and commenced operating in 2012.
In December 2011 the British car magazine Autocar praised the New Routemaster in a road test, rating it ahead of contemporary and historic buses.
[49] However, in December 2016 the new Mayor of London Sadiq Khan decided that no more orders would be placed for the bus after only 1,000 of Johnson's envisaged fleet of 2,000 had been procured.
Early work involved replacing older buses like the AEC Routemaster and fitting particulate filters to exhausts.
[55] London now has the second largest zero-emission bus fleet in Europe with over 1,400 battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses in service.
[23] Although the rear-entrance double-deck AEC Routemaster is the archetypal London bus, they were withdrawn in the early 2000s owing to their age, their inability to comply with disability legislation or accept wheelchairs or pushchairs, and their requirement for a two-person crew.
[64] In 2019, the remaining heritage route 15 was cut back to a seasonal service, running on weekends and bank holidays through the summer.
These are double-decker buses with a fully or partially open upper deck, which provide tourist services with either live or recorded commentary.
National Express' predominantly white vehicles are common on the roads of central London, on their way to and from their terminus at Victoria Coach Station.
In 2006, competition for long-distance traffic was introduced by Megabus, a subsidiary of the large UK bus operating company Stagecoach.
Other coach services link London to medium-distance destinations, and unlike National Express or Megabus provide walk-on fares.
Unlike their longer distance cousins, these are walk-on services, which serve stops throughout central London rather than running to Victoria Coach Station.
[73] In 1972, Oxford Street was designated a bus lane during peak hours, reportedly causing an increase of £250,000 in retail sales.
[77] From the early 1990s, work to address substantial traffic congestion in London led to the introduction of red routes (which prohibit vehicles stopping, loading or unloading along them), as well as a larger rollout of bus lanes.
[80] This was made permanent in December 2021, with TfL stating that bus journey times had reduced and service reliability had improved.
[82] Following a successful large-scale trial in 1987, London Transport began introducing selective vehicle detection to provide traffic light bus priority in the 1990s.
[84] For example, it was estimated that route 15 could have a journey time 4 minutes shorter, due to the number of selective vehicle detection points passed.
