London is a global player when it comes to public transport connectivity, but the issue with cities of its size is that away from the mainline corridors, everywhere takes so long to get to. For example Epsom Downs is only 10 miles from Clapham Junction as the crow flies, but it takes longer to get there than it does from Basingstoke, at least 30 miles further away. Moreover, Sutton to Stratford (London) is a quarter of the distance of Waterloo to Southampton but the journey takes just as long due to the stopping nature of cross-London rail services.
As for buses, they can be so slow that it becomes quicker to run the route from end to end. Using another real world example, me and my sister (both currently training for a half marathon) ran the Wandle Trail between Carshalton and Wandsworth today. We did pretty well with a time of 1hr 45 mins, but the bus route back (270 to Mitcham, 280 to Rosehill, 154 to Carshalton) was impacted by road closures in Tooting, with the entire return leg taking a whopping 2 hours! I understand there’s not a lot you can do to alleviate this sort of disruption when you haven’t got room to build additional infrastructure, but it does highlight how it can take an age just to get between boroughs in a bustling metropolis.
We have Superloop now for the outermost transport links which don’t have a parallel rail route, and this is an excellent step forward for transport in London, but should TfL be considering running more express style bus routes, building new tram lines and relief lines on Tube/Overground routes to make journeys faster between a wider range of London boroughs?
As for buses, they can be so slow that it becomes quicker to run the route from end to end. Using another real world example, me and my sister (both currently training for a half marathon) ran the Wandle Trail between Carshalton and Wandsworth today. We did pretty well with a time of 1hr 45 mins, but the bus route back (270 to Mitcham, 280 to Rosehill, 154 to Carshalton) was impacted by road closures in Tooting, with the entire return leg taking a whopping 2 hours! I understand there’s not a lot you can do to alleviate this sort of disruption when you haven’t got room to build additional infrastructure, but it does highlight how it can take an age just to get between boroughs in a bustling metropolis.
We have Superloop now for the outermost transport links which don’t have a parallel rail route, and this is an excellent step forward for transport in London, but should TfL be considering running more express style bus routes, building new tram lines and relief lines on Tube/Overground routes to make journeys faster between a wider range of London boroughs?