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.

[Rylan Holey]

Awwww - i used to take the 14 and the 414 daily! Awesomes.

[kymie]

I believe my mother was the frst woman bus driver for London Transport back in the 70's. She drove one of the green buses that went to the City from the Chilterns.

[Buddha belly]

Hundreds of women drove buses in the first and second world war periods, sorry. I'm pretty sure that in WW1 period the buses were still independant with London transport formed in 1933. After WW1 most women had to give up there jobs for men but after WW2 most women on bus and tube lines kept their jobs.

I feel really geeky right now.

[Doug Landry]

An enjoyable post. Thank you.

Kinda worked it out myself (okay, not the detail, but more on that later...). When you live on a bus route and the numbers change, it's not hard to grok a 'system' at work.
I worked for TfL's predecessor in the mid-80s and met plenty of good people who believed in 'London Transport' as a crucial service, as important as providing sanitation, heating and light to Londoners: No mission statement or KPIs required (on the other hand, completely outgunned by a large and depressing crush of people who didn't give a toss!).

[Pandimi.wordpress.com]

Well, now I know why some bus routes are prefixed with a W in Woodgreen.

[Simon K]

When I first skimmed this I thought, maybe they get asked this a lot and that's a standard response that they send to anyone who asks about route numbers. Still good, still informative and interesting, but not quite so impressive.

Then I read it more closely and realised he'd actually discussed the two routes that you mentioned, the 55 and C2, and it's clearly a response tailored exactly to what you'd asked. And, as you say, full of passion. Absolutely made of awesomeness.

[WKGK]

Great one, thanks for posting this brilliant response, and thanks to TFL for sending your request to the right person and have them take the time to respond. I'll definitely look for the patterns in bus numbers now!

[twitter.com/technominx]

See if you can get the writers bosses name so you can let them know about the awesomeness...

[Frank Norman]

I used to live on the 291 bus route in southeast London. I was talking to someone who had lived in the area previously and he talked about the 192 bus. I said, "you mean 291" and he insisted it was 192. It turned out that at some point the route had changed slightly and the number was turned around! Later on it became the 178.

[Biff Bifferson]

top stuff sir! thought the P was for peckham - never sussed C though.

[Rose Bradbury]

That's brilliant! I've always wondered that about the C, P numbers. Well done tfl!

[alex]

Great information, thanks. I do love our bus transport in London, and there are some fantastic drivers out there, but if it does deteriorate I have to say that the best experience I have of talking to TFL is when using the telephone service to complain about an incident on the buses (mostly when drivers drive right past a stop ignoring hands outstretched in Aldwych, or when buses just don't turn up (Aldwych doesn't have next bus readouts on the shelter so no clue what's going on). They are invariably very helpful, offer to call back with news of what they've done etc. They want more people to use the line as apparently if complaints rise above certain number on one route in one period they fine the company and if it continues the contract is withdrawn. They will also call the garage to find out from the inspector what a problem is, as their own computer readout is often not bang up to date. Number is 0845 300700. If the ticket machine doesn't give you a ticket, you can also claim the money back and they'll give you a number to give to the driver in lieu of payment. I only use buses to work so despite this post, I do love them overall!

[alex]

PS re: great unexpected responses. I once guessed the email address of a top bod at the BBC to ask a question about children's television and got a full, thoughtful and amusing response directly from him within hours. I was so shocked it took me a while to reply! He was obviously in a job he loved too.

[Sarah McCartney]

I'd lived in Ealing about a week when I spotted the E system. Stunned me that locals hadn't worked it out. (Same ones as thought two trains always went by one just after the other, because they hadn't noticed the First Western 125s had an engine at the front and another one at the back...) Anyway, thanks for that, and please thank the bloke for making the explanation such an attention grabber that you've got to read right to the end. Let's hear it for the nerds!

[Stephen Baron]

This bus number thing has fascinated me for years. I was brought up in North West London where the 16 bus is now augmented by the 316. But distressingly the 189 was withdrawn from its original route to St John's Wood (or thereabouts) from Park Royal and now runs a new route Brent Cross to Oxford Circus. As a child I took the 660 trolleybus to school which became the 260 and is now augmented by the 460. I could never understand why the 8, 176 and 1 went along the same road (Willesden Lane). Now 176 still runs from Camberwell but never makes it to the distant northern latitudes of Willesden. 8 is now 98 and 1 is also truncated. 113 and 13 still follow the same route along the Finchley Road, as do 183 and 83 to Golders Green. These are all extremely comforting unchanging elements in a fast-changing world! Good to hear I am not alone in this fascination with London bus numbers!

[Philip Hawkins]

Numbers in the 200s were originally reserved for single-deck operated routes and from the 1960s the 500s were for flat-fare Red Arrow routes in Central London. It was the suburban flat-fare routes which had prefix letters. Of course they are all flat fare now.

For very many years before 1924 and again from 1934 many rotes had suffix letters, the last being the 77A. These were variant routes from the ones without the suffix. Between 1924 and 1934 route numbers were assigned by the Metropolitan Police and suffix letters denoted short workings.

Quite a few of the old Country area and Green Line routes still run with their old numbers eg 353, 402 and 724.

[Malcolm]

Kymie, You are probably correct. Buddha belly is quite wrong. Although London Transport and for World War 1, London General, did employ a lot of women- the first conductress worked on Tilling's route 37 in 1915,they were never employed as drivers other than shunters who moved buses about within a garage. Indeed, some of the women were excellent mechanics.Your mother would however have not worked for London Transport, but presumably for the National Bus Company which took over the operation of most Green Line services (if that is what she drove)at the start of 1970.

[Mickey Rat]

There used to be routes numbered 36A, 36B, 36C and 36D that ran as variants of the 36 in the Catford/Grove Park area. There was also the 34B that operated as a variant of the 34 in the Edmonton area. I first remember these as an 11 year old bus spotter. I thought it was odd at the time. It was 35 years later whilst driving through Grove Park and working in the fashion industry that the penny dropped. Some wag at London Transport got away with this joke for all those years; and obviously his seniors must have been in on it also. Pity the PC brigade came along and spoiled it.

[Andrew James]

Yes Frank, the 192 went via Blackheath Village until about 1981 when it was re-routed via Kidbrooke and renumbered 291. A few years later it was re-routed again to Thamesmead and renumbered 178 because it replaced part of the 177.

[Andrew James]

In 1959 trolleybus route 691 between Barking and Barkingside was replaced by bus route 169 which still runs today, extended to Clayhall. There was a rumour within LT that staff simply flipped the bus stop route plates upside down rather than ordering new ones. In those days route number plates below the bus stop flag - known as E plates, were enamel plates. They are now sought after collectors items. These days TfL just use vinyl posted on to the stop flag.