How London buses are numbered - TfL come up trumps!

I tweeted yesterday that I'd received the most interesting email I'd ever been sent. I think that's still true.

As a Planner, I'm supposed to be interested in everything. Well, regardless of whether I should or shouldn't be interested in everything, I am. It's just the person I am. When I don't fully understand something, I try and find the answer or some context to the subject.

Last week I was waiting for the bus and wondered why they are numbered as they are, and why some have letters in front of a number.

I emailed the following note to TfL:

I just have a simple question that I'm hoping you can explain to me. Most buses are a number, but some are letters and numbers. So I catch the number 55 to work. But I also see the C2 when I'm around Old Street.

I'm just wondering can you explain the number system to me please? And also, who decides which number goes on which route?

Thanks

Well, yesterday I received this response. I'm pasting it verbatim (but anonymising the member of staff as he may not want his name made public):

We appreciate the importance of route numbers to London's bus passengers. They might be described as the shop window by which passengers recognise a route. In some cases - particularly with regard the long-established routes - a particular number may even evoke affection.

The numbering of London's bus routes has evolved slowly since the earliest days of regular bus operation in the capital. In a few instances, it is possible to trace the lineage of sections of existing routes back to their identically numbered predecessors from horse-drawn days. You may be interested to know that in 2 years time one London bus route will incontrovertibly reach its centenary. Route 24 first started operating between Pimlico and Hampstead Heath
under The General Omnibus Company in 1911, and since then the route has been subject only to minor changes to accommodate one-way systems.

There is a tradition for route planners within Transport for London and its forerunner organisations deliberately to respect the past by re-using numbers that have local historic associations. That is the case with route 55 that you mention. It was first introduced between Central London and Leyton during a major service re-organisation around forty years ago. Its number was a deliberate echo of a trolleybus route 555 that had run along Old Street to Hackney and beyond some years previously, and also of the tram route 55 that the trolleybus had replaced.

London Transport operated the capital's buses in various guises between 1933 and 1984. Until 1970 the organisation also had responsibility for routes in a doughnut-like ring of the outer surrounding countryside. The routes that served this area utilised numbers between 300 and 499, and 800 between and 899, with the 700 series set aside for Green Line coaches. With the resulting pressure on available numbers for new routes in the Central area (operated by red buses), in 1968 London Transport first started using the system of prefix numbers that continues to this day. The idea is that the prefix letter should designate the place around which the routes cluster - P for Peckham in the case of routes P4, P5, and P13; E  for Ealing in the case of series E1 to E11, for instance. The C in C2 stands for Central. The prefix 'N', however, denotes a night bus.

Now, with over 700 routes within Greater London alone, it is necessary for us to maintain this system. When we introduce a new route - or make alterations to an existing route by splitting it - the last digit or digits of the historic 'parent' route are used wherever possible, so that passengers might associate the incoming route with its predecessor. This was the case in 2003, for instance, when route 414 was chosen as the number for the new route between Maida Hill and Putney Bridge, which was intended to augment route historic route 14 south of Hyde Park Corner. 

How interesting is that!? What I love about it most is the passion which the person obviously has about the subject. He has managed to turn something that could be quite mundane into something that is compelling because of his passion for the subject. Brilliant.

My first thought on receiving this was "why can't all encounters with TfL be as this rewarding"... but that's a post for a different time.

What it also reminded me of is how much we take the web for granted. I didn't want to scour google for the answer, I wanted it from the horses mouth. I fired off an email and received a superb reply quickly. We shouldn't forget how easy it is to find answers to things. They may just be an email away.

I'd like to publicly thank the chap for making me enjoy something that could easily have turned into another bad experience with a brand.

Comments

[Jamie Coomber]

This is awesome. I have wondered the same myself as I get the C2 to work and back everyday :)

[Chungaiz]

Overdelivery is key. In this day and age anything normal is just we expect and therefore unremarkable. Underdelievery results in further dampening any impressions we had, but good customer relations will always appear far greater in their impact when done well.

Innocent smoothies sent me a box of 12 smoothies when I complained that the one I bought had gone bad. Giving out 12 smoothies round the office, telling everyone how amazing Innocent are, I put it to you that their overdelivery has had a positive effect to this day.

Ask the same question of 118 118 that you do AQA (63336) by text and compare their respective answers. The former is usually blunt, to the point, and slightly generic. The latter will always give you an extra point of information. Going the extra mile. (I always phrase questions politely and conversationally to AQA and bluntly or rudely to 118 118 as a consequnce, btw)

[Andrea]

It's awesome because I know from a friend that every road and motorway in the UK has the same logic and reason to it.
Quoting him...

Single digit numbers (A & B but not M) go out of London (1-6) and Edinburgh (7-9), both in a clockwise order. These roads mark the border of numbering zones.
Generally speaking (there are notable exceptions) you will find roads starting with the same number all in the same zone, so for example the A45 is between the A4 and the A5, the A75 is between the A7 and the A8.

It's painful sometimes to be interested in all these things because people think you're very weird but then.....who's NEVER going to ask 'what bus do I take?' / 'which way do I go?' :D

[Anjali]

Very very interesting email indeed - good on them for answering so quickly (but yes, if only all experiences with TfL were so good) and good on you for asking them! What's their email address by the way?

[Claire]

Brilliant post. Incidentally, I once asked this question of AQA and much as I like them, they didn't give me the right answer...

Here's a good pic: tram number 607... it still runs (though no longer a trolleybus) down Uxbridge Road, as in these pics...

http://www.trolleybus.net/gb607.htm

[Will]

Very nice chap. Hats off to the TfL.