A mid bus card reader Boarding from the middle door of a London bus used to be quite common (especially in central London) but the number of routes where this is allowed has now decreased substantially to two. They are, in fact, both of the remaining red arrows routes the 507 and 521. The former of these routes runs from Lon...

The 733 was a bus route operating in central London and lasted less than 6 months. Starting on Monday 17th January 2022 and with the last bus on Friday 13th May 2022 the route was created because of large upgrade works at Bank station which closed a section of the Northern Line. The Bigger Picture Bank station is busy. Bank station is old. And whilst Bank station is large, complex, and confusing it doesn't have enough capacity for all the passengers wanting to enter, exit, and change between trains at the station. Part of the problem at Bank ...

The R8 runs between Orpington Station and Biggin Hill via Green Street Green and Downe with the route mostly traversing very narrow rural roads. With an end to end journey time of just over 30 minutes and a scheduled bus every 70-90 minutes the whole route can be served by a single bus. There are 12 services each way a day and no service on Sundays or Public Holidays. The R8 is one of 13 TfL routes with an R prefix, with these numbered R1-R11, R68, and R70. The R1-R11 all operate in and around Orpington with the R68 and R70 operating around Richmond. Intriguingly all 11 R prefixed buses in Orpington stop at High Street / Orpington War Memorial in central Orpington. ...

London has over 19,000 bus stops, several hail and ride sections , and (to my knowledge) two bus stops that are not a bus stop. Bus stops that are not a bus stop are common outside of TfL's remit with them usually seen as a way to save money and only erect one bus stop not two. Interestingly, whilst served by a TfL operated bus route both of these stops are actually located in the county of Surrey (outside of Greater London) with one in the borough of Epsom and Ewell, and the other in Reigate and Banstead. ...

The congestion charge as its name suggests charges drivers £15 a day to drive in Central London. Currently these fares operate between 07:00 and 18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00 to 18:00 on Weekends and Bank Holidays but during the pandemic the times of operation were increased to between 07:00 and 22:00 everyday. The charges and fines are recorded using several hundred cameras in and on the border of the zone. The Zone The Congestion Charging Zone is roughly similar to zone 1 on the Tube Map (but the Congestion Charge Zone spans less far west than Zone 1). With it, roughly, bounded by the A5, A4202, and Vauxhall Bridge Road on the west and the A3204, A201, and Tower Bridge Road on...

BT (British Telecommunications) is a telecommunications company based in Britain and it used to be owned by the public sector (which meant that the government directly oversaw its operation). But in 1984 it was privatised under Margaret Thatcher's reign with all the government's shares sold by 1993. British Telecommunications (that is an eighteen character word and the reason why the company is almost always shortened to BT) owns a lot of street infrastructure and a few famous towers leftover from its public sector days. BT has towers in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester, and Swansea. Cardiff’s and Swansea’s towers are just tall office blocks, Bristol’s and Manchester’s are actual telecommunication towers. But Birmingham’s and London’s to...

London has a lot of famous buildings with most of them known by normal unremarkable names. Examples of normal names include the Houses of Parliament which is home to parliament, and Tower Bridge which is a bridge with two famous towers located on its length and is next to the Tower of London. But Londoners have a good imagination and have consequently given interesting names to many of London's buildings. These are not usually their official names but are well recognised by the majority of Londoners. The Cheesegrater The Cheesegrater is located proximally to the Gherkin and the Walkie T...

The entrance to Shoreditch Shoreditch station (not to be confused with Shoreditch High Street station) was the terminus of the East London Line. The East London Line was London's twelfth tube line and operated between New Cross/New Cross Gate and Whitechapel with occasional extension to Shoreditch. But the East London Line closed on December 22 2007 with Shoreditch...

The River Thames is the second longest river in the UK and flows from Thames Head in Gloucestershire out to the North Sea in the Thames Estuary. On its journey the Thames pases Oxford, Reading, and Windsor among other towns and villages with it then flowing into and through London. The Thames is located in the south of the UK and subsequently rarely experiences subzero weather. This makes the freezing over of the Thames last year (don't get your hopes up) a rarity. The River Isis The River Thames is also called the River Isis in the section between the source at Thames Head and Dorchest...