{"id":100577,"date":"2025-05-14T10:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T10:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/100577\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T10:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T10:51:08","slug":"post-covid-slump-hits-londons-busiest-bus-routes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/100577\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Covid slump hits London’s busiest bus routes"},"content":{"rendered":"

None of London\u2019s seven busiest bus routes have attracted the same passenger levels as before the pandemic, TfL data has revealed<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overall usage across the seven most used routes last year was down over 9% compared to 2019, according to the annual passenger and distance travelled data.<\/p>\n

The seven busiest bus routes are the 18, 149, 29, 207, 86, 25 and 5, which serve the boroughs of Brent<\/a>, Hackney<\/a>, Westminster<\/a>, Hillingdon<\/a> and Newham<\/a> as well as Stratford and the City of London<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Thomas Wignall, a 23-year-old bus user from Mill Hill<\/a>, said: \u201cBefore the pandemic, I used to get the bus pretty much every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen lockdown hit, my work was moved totally online and I almost never left my house, so I never really got the bus, apart from the odd trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2022, I heard someone threaten to stab someone else on the bus and that experience made me more wary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith that, the constant delays and the fact that I now only have to travel into work a couple days a week, I don\u2019t have a reason to use the bus as much anymore\u201d<\/p>\n

Remote working has significantly reduced the need for daily commutes, which has been attributed as one of the main reasons that bus usage in London has failed to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels.<\/p>\n

According to TfL\u2019s Travel in London<\/a> report for 2024, during the week of 10 June 2024, bus journeys were between 82% and 86% of the equivalent week in 2019 across all weekdays, while ridership on Sunday saw a 99% recovery.<\/p>\n

A large portion of London workers now work either fully from home or have adopted a hybrid system of working, where they spend at least one day a week working from home.<\/p>\n

According to a study<\/a> into what is dubbed as the working from home revolution published by Kings College London<\/a> in 2022, 61% of London workers reported to be working from home at least one day per week, compared to just 37% before the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Bus drivers on the ground have shared different experiences of how busy their route has been since the pandemic but have also expressed concerns about the rise of fare evasion.<\/p>\n

Andrew Heywood, a London bus driver of 13 years, said: \u201cI\u2019ve noticed, along with a lot of drivers I\u2019ve spoken to, that since the pandemic, the public have become a lot more abusive, and the level of fare dodging has got out of control.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve definitely noticed that rush hour in the mornings and evenings is less stressful as people are still working from home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ricardo Barros, a Portuguese-born bus driver, said: \u201cFor me, the traffic and passenger levels seem the same as before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cFare evading now is the worst I\u2019ve seen in my 20 years as a London bus driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there has been a big increase in bus drivers and the garages are almost full, so the job can\u2019t be too bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fare evasion reportedly costs TfL around \u00a3130m annually<\/a>, limiting the transport network\u2019s ability to improve and maintain bus services.<\/p>\n

Across all modes of transport, it is estimated that 3.4% of all journeys are not paid for, according to TfL\u2019s most recent quarterly results.<\/p>\n

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: \u201cFare evasion steals vital revenue from TfL and denies Londoners of investment in a safe, frequent and reliable transport service.<\/p>\n

\u201cFare evasion not only impacts TfL\u2019s finances but also affects the confidence and safety of its frontline teams and fare paying customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

TfL has trialled new approaches in a bid to attract riders back, including real-time crowding data, improvements to the mobile app and the introduction of the new Superloop<\/a> express routes around outer boroughs.<\/p>\n

Campaigners say that more is needed to be done to restore faith in the capital\u2019s bus service. <\/p>\n

Michael Roberts, CEO of London TravelWatch<\/a>, the official watchdog for transport across the capital, said: \u201cEven before the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, bus journeys in London had been falling.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur recommendations, that the TfL should shorten journey times, enhance passenger information, improve the overall passenger experience, stronger collaboration with boroughs and continued innovation in providing services, will not come as a surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

TfL announced in their Bus Action Plan <\/a>that further improvements are on the way.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for TfL said: \u201cLondon\u2019s bus network plays a vital role in enabling people to travel sustainably and affordably and we\u2019re working hard to make it even better. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes investment in new bus lanes and other measures to give buses priority on the roads, as well as new zero emission buses with innovative features to improve the customer experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Featured image credit: Hugh Llewelyn via Flickr<\/a> under CC BY-SA 2.0 licence<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"None of London\u2019s seven busiest bus routes have attracted the same passenger levels as before the pandemic, TfL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[2796,748,46715,3386,393,4884,45953,46716,257,46717,2887,46718,30372,1264,1263,16,15,3069],"class_list":{"0":"post-100577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-brent","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-bus","11":"tag-covid","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-hackney","15":"tag-hillingdon","16":"tag-london","17":"tag-newham","18":"tag-pandemic","19":"tag-sadiq-kahn","20":"tag-stratford","21":"tag-tfl","22":"tag-transport","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-westminster"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114505808886249236","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}