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 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 X140 runs from Heathrow to Harrow, is one of TfL’s 3 buses with the X prefix, and one of only 4 which have a limited stop element. The X140 only started at the end of 2019 and runs, roughly, on the same route as the 140 and N140. The X in X140 means express, and while it skips some stops the X140 stops much more frequently than the comparable X26, which runs from Heathrow to Croydon. Other Express Buses TfL operates over 600 bus routes, including the 81 which runs to Slough , and only 4 have "limited stop" or express elements. These are the 607, X26, X68, and X140 with each of them operating in a un...

South Western Railway is getting new trains (eventually). The 90 trains were ordered in summer 2017 and despite the first train being scheduled to start service in summer 2019, still to this day none of South Western Railway's Aventra's are in revenue earning passenger service. In fact the end of 2021 was the scheduled date for all the 775 carriages to be in service. This means these trains are very late and (most of) the trains they are going to replace are deteriorating pretty rapidly. Aventra's The Aventra is the platform created by Bombardier for commuter trains. The platform has proved ver...

Heathrow Airport has 4 terminals separated in 3 disconnected areas. This means that Heathrow Airport needs to provide a way to get its passengers between the terminals. This can be done by using local buses, the national rail network consisting of TfL Rail (soon to be the Elizabeth Line) and Heathrow Express, and the Piccadilly Line. The Terminals Heathrow Airport consists of 4 separated terminals which are numbered 2-5. There used to be 5 terminals but terminal 1 closed down in 2015 and currently terminal 4 is also closed (temporarily) due to COVID-19. ...