A superloop bus service for Outer London

A new fast bus route, called the Superloop, has been announced by the Mayor of London today, that may improve bus routes around the periphery of London, if it’s built.

In essence, a number of existing express bus routes, which stop at just a handful of stops will be rebranded, and then subject to consultation, more sections will be added to create a near-loop around London.

The bus route aims to fix one of the issues with much of the public transport network, in that it’s oriented towards funnelling people in and out of central London.

Since the pandemic, travel around the suburbs has recovered much faster than travel into central London, with people who work from home some days more likely to travel to a local town centre than into the centre to go shopping.

TfL says that the most recently introduced limited-stop express route, the X140, delivered a 10-15 per cent increase in weekday demand, so there is pent-up demand for faster bus links between the major town centres. Although the X140 route only serves 13 stops in each direction, these stops interchange with 42 other bus routes and seven different rail lines.

The hopper fare allows people to swap between the X140 and other feeder bus routes without paying twice.

Now they want to expand that concept to run around outer London.

The information from the Mayor’s office is still fairly high-level, so there are a lot of unknowns. Will the buses actually be a loop service, or will people need to swap buses at the end of each quadrant, and who will operate the buses?

Although the GLA is providing £8 million to TfL to get the service up and running, that’s likely going to primarily cover the cost of rebranding work and consultations. There certainly isn’t any money for more buses or substantial upgrades to the road network to give the buses their own dedicated lanes.

The existing semi-fast bus routes that will be rebranded as Superloop buses will be the X140 connecting Heathrow and Harrow, and a more frequent route X26 connecting Heathrow and West Croydon.

That would create a Superloop link between Harrow and Croydon, via Heathrow Airport.

The next new part of the outer London bus network will be the route linking Harrow with North Finchley, which is subject to consultation.

Following that, views will be sought on future sections of the orbital network. These proposed future sections include a limited-stop express link between North Finchley and Walthamstow and between Walthamstow and the Royal Docks via Ilford. Links are also proposed between Bexleyheath, Bromley and Croydon. Some of the benefits of the proposed Superloop will be realised later this year, with the X26 doubling in frequency so that buses run every 15 minutes instead of every 30 minutes.

However, at the moment there’s no timeline for the completion of the Superloop, or any guarantee that it will be built, as it’s quite possible that the public consultations could come out against the proposals.