London Bus Tender Awards: Routes 133, 279 & 333 To Convert To New Electric Buses And New Routemasters To Continue On Routes 59, 137 and East London Transit Services

Drawing of the New Routemaster with East London Transit livery

The new London Bus Tender Awards have revealed routes 133, 279, and 333 will soon be using brand new zero-emission electric buses, and the three-door, two-staircase hybrid New Routemasters are retained on routes 59, 137, and the East London Transit services.

LBSL intends to enter into new contracts for the following routes with the operators listed below:

London Overground extension to Barking Riverside goes ahead!

TfL has reported that the proposal to extend the London Overground from Barking to Barking Riverside gets the thumbs up from the government.

From TfL press release

08 August 2017

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and Transport for London (TfL) have welcomed the news that the Government has given the green light for a vital new extension of the London Overground to Barking Riverside.

New Routemasters come to East London Transit services

I haven’t given you a New Routemaster update for a while now so I thought it was about time that I did.

The new East London Transit routes EL1, EL2 & EL3 contract starts on Saturday 18^th February 2017 operated by Go Ahead Blue Triangle from River Road (RR) garage. The new contract requires the three-door two-staircase hybrid buses called the New Routemaster, purchased directly by TfL and leased to private operators for their route contracts.

New Routemasters for East London Transit!

A couple of weeks ago I published an article suggesting that New Routemaster routes should have a branded bus service, then out of the blue TfL decides to have East London Transit routes with New Routemaster buses that have 3 doors and 2 staircases.

Route 48 is also listed for New Routemaster conversion and a follow up with various routes converting to standard hybrid buses.

New Routemaster routes branded as their own network?

This is a follow up to my previous article showing the list of routes served with New Routemaster (NRM) routes.

As the number of New Routemaster routes has increased to 25, I do think they should have a specific branded service which is similar to the East London Transit and Fastrack Bus Rapid Transit scheme and the old Red Arrow service.

Proposed changes for London Bus routes 167, 387, W11…

Here are the consultations from TFL on the proposals to change the London Bus routes.

Route 167

Debden and Loughton in Essex are currently linked to North East London by TfL bus routes 20, 167, 397 and 549. Essex County Council provided funding towards the operation of routes 20 and 167, however this stopped in April.

Proposed changes for route EL2 goes ahead

On November 25th 2015 I did an article about the proposed changes to the East London Transit services. The proposed changes have now been given a green light and will occur on 19th March 2016.

2016 Tube map from a 2004 perspective

Since the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers have written about this I thought I would add some more detail to those proposed services from the map.

I've only just found out about the 2016 Tube map from a 2004 proposal and a lot has changed when compared to the present one we have.

Proposed changes for East London Transit routes and 436 & 452

Recently, TFL proposed changes for the East London Transit routes. They wish to add more services on both routes and the EL2 will be re-routed from Barking to Becontree Heath Bus station which runs parallel with Route 5.

From the TFL Consultation

“We have looked at bus services in the Barking and Dagenham area and identified issues including crowding on the approach into Barking, in particular from Ripple Road, and Longbridge Road which is also served by route 5. We also anticipate that demand will continue to grow for buses to and from Barking Riverside Development.