Join us to chat about all things related to London transport on our Facebook group, Londonist Roundel Ramblings— everyone welcome.
Take a good look at the photo of two C2s above. Really study all the details. Why? Because you probably won't get a chance in the near future — TfL has launched a consultation to stop running the bus.
So what do you do if you're someone who uses the C2 regularly? TfL's solution is the 88. At the moment the 88 runs from Camden to Clapham, whereas the C2 runs from Parliament Hill Fields to Oxford Circus via Camden Town. As they cover a lot of the same ground — both buses run between Camden and Oxford Circus — TfL intends to merge the two routes.
The 88 will take over the the Camden Town to Parliament Hill part of the route, making sure Parliament Hill Fields and Kentish Town remain served. However the routes don't follow the same path between Camden and Oxford Circus, so one route has to win out at the expense of the other. That winning route is the C2 — the bus travels alongside Regent's Park on Albany Street rather than via Hampstead Road, where the 88 currently serves Mornington Crescent, Euston and Warren Street stations.
So some slight changes mean that London loses a bus route. But that loss is mostly covered, so no biggie, right?
This is not an anomaly
The merging of the C2 and 88 is part of a wider picture among London's buses. The city is flush with bus routes, and small adjustments are made all the time to serve the city — and its residents — as well as possible.
However, recent adjustments all feed into a larger trend of reducing the number of buses on London's streets. In recent years the city has lost the number 82 and it also looks set to lose the number 10 — both cases involve the imperfect merging of two routes.
However there's a much bigger trend at play here. Looking at TfL's most recent Permanent Bus Changes document shows that a plethora of buses are disappearing. It's just that most of them aren't doing so across the entirety of their route. It shows six bus routes (including the soon to be lost C2) whose frequencies are decreasing. Again that might not sound like much, but those are the frequency changes happening over just one month. Blogger Diamond Geezer logged all the buses lost in the first few months of 2018.
This isn't a trend that's unique to 2018 either. In 2017, 48 bus routes had their frequencies cut. Inarguably there are fewer buses on London's streets today than there were a couple of years ago, and therefore longer waits between buses for passengers.
Why now?
In September 2016, Sadiq Khan launched the hopper fare. In theory this should make people who don't have travelcards less averse to changing buses, because if they do it within one hour of boarding the first bus, they won't have to pay extra. However, it's unclear if this works in reality — generally, people prefer routes with fewer changes even, if it takes a little bit longer to reach the final destination.
Still, the Hopper Fare is the given reason for many of these route changes. It's mentioned in the C2 consultation, as a way for those who the 88 no longer serves to make it onto the bus.
This doesn't really explain why bus frequencies are decreasing, though. That's happening because passenger numbers are down. A more infrequent service is the response, which does make us wonder... doesn't that run the risk of pushing passenger numbers down even further?
As always with TfL in 2018, one suspects whether money is at the heart of this. TfL is in serious financial difficulty at the moment, and a cut in services reflects that. That's much more likely the reason behind the closure of routes than the introduction of the Hopper fare.
So next time you're stuck out in the drizzle, waiting a minute or two longer than you remember, this here is why.
