Good news and Bad news for London Buses on 12th September 2016

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first:

Bus services that are operated by Tower Transit are on strike today!

Routes 23 25 28 30 31 58 69 70 212 236 266 308 328 339 425 444 488 W14 W15 N28 N31 N97 N550 N551 are delayed/cancelled due to #BusStrike

— TfL Bus Alerts (@TfLBusAlerts) September 12, 2016

Now for the good news; the 1 hour hopper fare is in force.

The @MayorofLondon has launched the Hopper fare. 2 journeys for £1.50 when you change bus or tram within 1 hour pic.twitter.com/jdQBVcnR6X

— TfL Bus Alerts (@TfLBusAlerts) September 12, 2016

From TFL Fares page

Hopper fare

Two bus or tram journeys for the price of one.

Make a journey using pay as you go on a bus or tram, and you can make a second bus or tram journey for free within one hour of first touching in.

You must touch in using the same card on the second bus or tram.

Hopper fares apply to adult and discounted rate pay as you go journeys.

A Hopper fare will not apply if:

·         You make a journey on Tube, DLR, London Overground, TfL Rail, Emirates Air Line, River Bus or National Rail services between the first and second bus or tram journey

·         Your Oyster card has a negative pay as you go balance after the first journey. If you clear the negative balance within one hour of touching in, you can still make the second journey for free

·         You use an Oyster card to change from a tram to a bus at Wimbledon station. For these journeys, an automatic refund for the second fare will be paid to your Oyster card

Hopefully this scheme will reduce fare evasion on the 3 door 2 staircase hybrid bus called the New Routemaster.

Also, what they’re not mentioning is that the hopper fare does not apply to the non-London buses.

I’m also happy to report that the £4.50 daily cap for London Buses has been retained.

I’ll finish off the news with an update from LOTS:

1) The LTs for Arriva route 253 are still parked up at Edmonton awaiting some essential equipment, although a few LTs from the route 73 allocation are in use on the route. More LTs are now in use on the 189 as the Brent Cross bus parking problem is now being controlled. Delivery continues of new Metroline VWHs for Harrow Weald and also Arriva London StreetLites (batch SLS 1-22) for route 450 at Norwood. The next batch of BYD/ADL buses (batch SEe 13-22) has begun to arrive for the 507/521 as well and it looks as though the MHVs (batch MHV 21-85) for Go-Ahead London are imminent.

2) At Arriva Southern Counties, the Volvo B7RLEs replaced by new E400MMCs on route 310 have moved to Harlow and are topping up allocations on routes 508/509/510 and 724 and replacing the remaining Dart/ Pointers.  Most of the 12 Citaros in MAX livery from Midlands (batch 3007-3018) are now in service on Arriva the Shires routes 800/850 (Wycombe- Reading), its B7RLEs being transferred away from Wycombe to Luton and Midlands.  More DAF/East Lancs double-decks have arrived at Luton and are helping to cover the programme of DDA-fitments on the older Tridents there.

You can follow me on Twitter and Google Plus which is @CLondoner92

Image attribution

By Au Morandarte from Chiswick/Romford, London, England - DSC01522Uploaded by Ultra7, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30846129