The second section of the proposed Superloop bus service around London has opened for public consultation. The X34 bus route is planned to run between North Finchley and Walthamstow, with a limited number of stops between to provide a faster bus service around North London.
This is the second consultation that has opened since the Superloop was announced in March.
This section of the Superloop will see a new express route, the X34, introduced to run alongside part of the 221-bus route between North Finchley and New Southgate, and the existing 34-bus route between Arnos Grove and Walthamstow.
TfL’s consultation says that these are the busiest parts of the existing routes and serve areas that are expected to see busier transport services in the future due to developments at Meridian Water, for example.
Under the plans, during Monday to Saturday daytimes there would be a combined frequency at the common stops on the proposed X34 routes with buses arriving roughly every five to six minutes.
Naturally, with anything, where TfL giveth with one hand, they taketh with the other.
The consultation notes that the introduction of the X34 route will see a reduction of the existing 34 bus route. Although the two routes run alongside each other for most of the time and there will see more buses along the joint route, they diverge at Southgate, so people travelling between Barnet and Southgate would see a reduction in service.
Likewise, there will be fewer route 34 buses along the combined route at stops where the X34 buses won’t call at.
During the Mon-Sat daytime, 34 buses will run every ten minutes instead of every 7.5 minutes and would be halved in the evenings and on Sundays to buses every 15 minutes. So people who wait at the X34/34 bus stops will see more buses per hour, but people at the 34-only bus stops will see fewer buses per hour.
Offsetting that would be the presumption that faster X34 buses will be picking up the majority of bus passengers at stops they call at so that the slower 34 buses will have more seats available at the stops they call at.
The X34 Superloop bus consultation documents are here.
If approved, they expect the X34 route to start next spring.
The consultation for the X183 route between Harrow and North Finchley is also open at the moment.
The full Superloop routes as currently proposed
(c) TfL
Although the X34 is shown as passing North Middlesex Hospital, the X34 won’t be stopping there. This allows buses to take the A406 North Circular Road underpass through Cambridge Roundabout, which will save a lot of time.
Buses will stop at Silver Street Station which is within walking distance of the Hospital – a walk which train passengers already do. There are alternative buses which stop closer (not least the 34) for those who cannot or choose not to walk that far.
I think more TfL buses could adopt an express/skip stop approach; would increase ridership for longer journeys I think; faster longer journeys at the expense of single seat journeys for some.
Eg on the Finchley Road corridor and the Maida Vale corridor
@MilesT
The trouble is, skipping stops doesn’t save all that much time when the buses are on the same busy road with frequent junctions – buses tend to expend more time waiting at junctions than they do at stops, especially the more lightly used stops that would get skipped.
The X34 strategy might work because the route is mostly on the North Circular. Nevertheless, the X34 will still need to leave the North Circular and traverse multiple sets of traffic lights to usefully stop at places like Silver Street and Meridian Water; and ironically a lot of the stops that’ll be skipped further West are directly on the main road.