Those taking decisions should always put themselves in the shoes of the passenger and ask whether what they will think reasonable
Average bus speeds in central London are now down to 7.4mph (picture: Shutterstock)
It was interesting to see the latest figures for bus passenger numbers (PT351). Most striking was the fact that numbers in London are declining, whereas those elsewhere continue to edge up. This is the opposite of the trend that applied when I was buses minister between 2010 and 2013, when London numbers were growing, and shrinking elsewhere.
It is not as though there have been no innovations in London. For one, there has been the broadly welcomed Superloop network, as well as a reconfiguration of services in the centre, not to mention the introduction of a new wave of up-to-date environmentally friendly vehicles.
Transport for London blames journey times for the declining numbers, and with good reason. Average bus speeds in central London are now down to 7.4mph. This is actually less that the average speed achieved in the early part of the 20th century, when horse-drawn vehicles managed 8mph. For a typical journey of 6.2 miles, the average travel time is now over 33 minutes, making London the slowest city in Europe and among the top five slowest globally.
We are now at a point where people only take the bus in central London if there is no viable tube alternative, no desire to walk or cycle, or no time pressure.
Now there is only so much TfL can do about this. You can add bus lanes and put in bus-friendly traffic light sequences, but the London road network is what it is. The public is however legitimately entitled to expect that TfL will not act to make matters worse, yet they have.
The blanket 20mph limit across the city has been welcomed on road safety grounds, but is it really sensible to apply such a limit to the multi-lane Park Lane, or the wide Marylebone Road? Slowed down buses dutifully stick to this new lower limit, affecting their journey times, while private cars and vans fly by at higher speeds, happy it seems to risk a speeding ticket.
Worse is the widespread and growing habit of holding buses up at bus stops to “regulate the service”. Bus timetables have logically been created to take account of expected journey times during periods of congestion and bus companies are told to rigidly adhere to these. Yet there are periods when congestion is much less bad, even absent, notably during school holidays. On these occasions, a bus passenger can expect to be held at a bus stop for up to three minutes while cars and vans, and Ubers, shoot past in free-flowing traffic. Nothing is more likely to put people off using buses.
I was dismayed to note that this virus has now infected Go Ahead’s excellent Brighton and Hove operation, who have also now started holding buses full of passengers on clear roads for extended periods.
I can see the logic of holding the first or last bus of the day, or a bus on a route where there a timetabled frequency of 20 minutes or more, but why hold a bus where in the best case scenario, they are due to arrive every five minutes?
After all, if road conditions mean a bus is running slightly early, then it is likely the bus behind will be similarly early, thereby roughly maintaining the desired frequency. The place to regulate a service is at a terminus, when all passengers have alighted.
This inflexible policy is sometimes taken to extremes. On one occasion I was on a bus to Clapham Junction station and the bus was held for some minutes at the stop before the station so it would arrive on time. I nearly missed my train.
TfL regularly apply the same policy to their tube trains, even in the face of overwhelming logic that suggests they should behave otherwise.
What is the point of “regulating the service” by holding Circle Line trains for extended periods at High Street Kensington, as regularly happens, when the terminus, Edgware Road, is just four stops away? Invariably there will be more people on the tube being held than want to board at the next three stations before Edgware Road. And if the issue is occasionally platform space at Edgware Road, why not hold the train at the stop before, Paddington, which after all is where most people by that point in the journey will want to alight?
The passenger, whether on a bus, a train or a tram, should be centre stage
And who thinks it a good idea to hold a jam-packed rush hour Northern Line train at a stiflingly hot underground station for an extended period to “regulate the service”? Do the passengers who can barely move think it is a good idea? Particularly when even more arrive and force their way onto the train. Perhaps it looks tidy and organised in some remote air-conditioned TfL office somewhere. Perhaps instead they should apply common sense and consider what passengers actually want.
Meanwhile on the national rail network, we have just had another “rail sale” with some pretty good offers of discounted fares. £10 for a journey between London Waterloo and Exeter St David’s is really good value. Personally I have snapped up some forthcoming journeys between Lewes and London Victoria at just £4 apiece.
The Treasury has historically been very reluctant to risk fare income unless it is sure a package can wash its face financially. It would be interesting to learn in due course if the extra journeys this sort of initiative generates compensate for the reductions in fare income from those who would have been travelling anyway.
Or maybe the Treasury has decided at last to give rail passengers a better deal. The Chancellor did after all freeze regulated rail fares in the last budget, allegedly to the surprise of those in the Department for Transport, as well as everybody else.
If so, this is a brave policy, given that overall farebox income is still well short of the pre-Covid level. Southern for instance tell me that weekly gateline numbers by December 2025 were at 94% of 2019 levels, but the changes to travel patterns since then mean that across the rail network, the full year 2025 revenue was down 16% compared with 2019/20.
It may be that the percentage gap between passenger numbers and income will close. Southern tell me that weekdays are now growing twice as fast as weekends. Interestingly, they also tell me that Thursday is now their busiest day of the week.
In any case, it is good to see efforts being made both by the government and the industry itself to use price to attract more passengers. But does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?
I am assuming that a key target audience for the rail sale are the potential leisure travellers, those who were not already planning to take the train somewhere. The trouble is these potential passengers, maybe those who have not used the railway for a very long time, may well find they are confronted by engineering works when they want to travel. Those wishing to travel to London from Brighton, Lewes or Eastbourne will find there are no rail services for three Saturdays and three Sundays this month.
Now I appreciate works do have to be carried out, and I can see from the list provided to me that a large number of different and necessary matters will be dealt with during these closures. But it is a pity to combine the timing of the works with the timing of a rail sale.
There is also a wider issue of ticket prices to be considered. While a rail sale and a fares freeze send out positive messages to potential and existing passengers, other scenarios can have the opposite effect.
Between Christmas and New Year, engineering works meant that Avanti passengers travelling between London and Manchester faced a gruelling four-hour journey – twice the normal length – and one involving three changes. They were however still expected to pay £79.80 for the privilege.
Similarly, West Midlands trains were charging £70 for a five-hour service between the two cities, including a dreaded rail replacement bus between Milton Keynes and Northampton.
When I was a rail minister, I put forward a proposal that would have cut by a third or a half the cost of a rail journey where a rail replacement bus was involved. The industry, the Treasury, and my Conservative coalition partners were all horrified and
killed the idea off.
People understand that engineering works have to take place but many feel, rightly, that the cost of the journey should be reduced if the level of service is reduced. I urge those at the fledgling GBR to look again at this idea.
The conclusions I draw from all this are that the passenger, whether on a bus, a train or a tram, should be centre stage, and those taking decisions should always put themselves in the shoes of the passenger and ask whether what they are proposing is something the average passenger will think reasonable and sensible. Small things matter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Norman Baker served as transport minister from May 2010 until October 2013. He was Lib Dem MP for Lewes between 1997 and 2015.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
Putting customers front and centre
by Passenger Transport on Jan 16, 2026 • 12:30 pm No CommentsThose taking decisions should always put themselves in the shoes of the passenger and ask whether what they will think reasonable
It was interesting to see the latest figures for bus passenger numbers (PT351). Most striking was the fact that numbers in London are declining, whereas those elsewhere continue to edge up. This is the opposite of the trend that applied when I was buses minister between 2010 and 2013, when London numbers were growing, and shrinking elsewhere.
It is not as though there have been no innovations in London. For one, there has been the broadly welcomed Superloop network, as well as a reconfiguration of services in the centre, not to mention the introduction of a new wave of up-to-date environmentally friendly vehicles.
Transport for London blames journey times for the declining numbers, and with good reason. Average bus speeds in central London are now down to 7.4mph. This is actually less that the average speed achieved in the early part of the 20th century, when horse-drawn vehicles managed 8mph. For a typical journey of 6.2 miles, the average travel time is now over 33 minutes, making London the slowest city in Europe and among the top five slowest globally.
We are now at a point where people only take the bus in central London if there is no viable tube alternative, no desire to walk or cycle, or no time pressure.
Now there is only so much TfL can do about this. You can add bus lanes and put in bus-friendly traffic light sequences, but the London road network is what it is. The public is however legitimately entitled to expect that TfL will not act to make matters worse, yet they have.
The blanket 20mph limit across the city has been welcomed on road safety grounds, but is it really sensible to apply such a limit to the multi-lane Park Lane, or the wide Marylebone Road? Slowed down buses dutifully stick to this new lower limit, affecting their journey times, while private cars and vans fly by at higher speeds, happy it seems to risk a speeding ticket.
Worse is the widespread and growing habit of holding buses up at bus stops to “regulate the service”. Bus timetables have logically been created to take account of expected journey times during periods of congestion and bus companies are told to rigidly adhere to these. Yet there are periods when congestion is much less bad, even absent, notably during school holidays. On these occasions, a bus passenger can expect to be held at a bus stop for up to three minutes while cars and vans, and Ubers, shoot past in free-flowing traffic. Nothing is more likely to put people off using buses.
I was dismayed to note that this virus has now infected Go Ahead’s excellent Brighton and Hove operation, who have also now started holding buses full of passengers on clear roads for extended periods.
I can see the logic of holding the first or last bus of the day, or a bus on a route where there a timetabled frequency of 20 minutes or more, but why hold a bus where in the best case scenario, they are due to arrive every five minutes?
After all, if road conditions mean a bus is running slightly early, then it is likely the bus behind will be similarly early, thereby roughly maintaining the desired frequency. The place to regulate a service is at a terminus, when all passengers have alighted.
This inflexible policy is sometimes taken to extremes. On one occasion I was on a bus to Clapham Junction station and the bus was held for some minutes at the stop before the station so it would arrive on time. I nearly missed my train.
TfL regularly apply the same policy to their tube trains, even in the face of overwhelming logic that suggests they should behave otherwise.
What is the point of “regulating the service” by holding Circle Line trains for extended periods at High Street Kensington, as regularly happens, when the terminus, Edgware Road, is just four stops away? Invariably there will be more people on the tube being held than want to board at the next three stations before Edgware Road. And if the issue is occasionally platform space at Edgware Road, why not hold the train at the stop before, Paddington, which after all is where most people by that point in the journey will want to alight?
And who thinks it a good idea to hold a jam-packed rush hour Northern Line train at a stiflingly hot underground station for an extended period to “regulate the service”? Do the passengers who can barely move think it is a good idea? Particularly when even more arrive and force their way onto the train. Perhaps it looks tidy and organised in some remote air-conditioned TfL office somewhere. Perhaps instead they should apply common sense and consider what passengers actually want.
Meanwhile on the national rail network, we have just had another “rail sale” with some pretty good offers of discounted fares. £10 for a journey between London Waterloo and Exeter St David’s is really good value. Personally I have snapped up some forthcoming journeys between Lewes and London Victoria at just £4 apiece.
The Treasury has historically been very reluctant to risk fare income unless it is sure a package can wash its face financially. It would be interesting to learn in due course if the extra journeys this sort of initiative generates compensate for the reductions in fare income from those who would have been travelling anyway.
Or maybe the Treasury has decided at last to give rail passengers a better deal. The Chancellor did after all freeze regulated rail fares in the last budget, allegedly to the surprise of those in the Department for Transport, as well as everybody else.
If so, this is a brave policy, given that overall farebox income is still well short of the pre-Covid level. Southern for instance tell me that weekly gateline numbers by December 2025 were at 94% of 2019 levels, but the changes to travel patterns since then mean that across the rail network, the full year 2025 revenue was down 16% compared with 2019/20.
It may be that the percentage gap between passenger numbers and income will close. Southern tell me that weekdays are now growing twice as fast as weekends. Interestingly, they also tell me that Thursday is now their busiest day of the week.
In any case, it is good to see efforts being made both by the government and the industry itself to use price to attract more passengers. But does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?
I am assuming that a key target audience for the rail sale are the potential leisure travellers, those who were not already planning to take the train somewhere. The trouble is these potential passengers, maybe those who have not used the railway for a very long time, may well find they are confronted by engineering works when they want to travel. Those wishing to travel to London from Brighton, Lewes or Eastbourne will find there are no rail services for three Saturdays and three Sundays this month.
Now I appreciate works do have to be carried out, and I can see from the list provided to me that a large number of different and necessary matters will be dealt with during these closures. But it is a pity to combine the timing of the works with the timing of a rail sale.
There is also a wider issue of ticket prices to be considered. While a rail sale and a fares freeze send out positive messages to potential and existing passengers, other scenarios can have the opposite effect.
Between Christmas and New Year, engineering works meant that Avanti passengers travelling between London and Manchester faced a gruelling four-hour journey – twice the normal length – and one involving three changes. They were however still expected to pay £79.80 for the privilege.
Similarly, West Midlands trains were charging £70 for a five-hour service between the two cities, including a dreaded rail replacement bus between Milton Keynes and Northampton.
When I was a rail minister, I put forward a proposal that would have cut by a third or a half the cost of a rail journey where a rail replacement bus was involved. The industry, the Treasury, and my Conservative coalition partners were all horrified and
killed the idea off.
People understand that engineering works have to take place but many feel, rightly, that the cost of the journey should be reduced if the level of service is reduced. I urge those at the fledgling GBR to look again at this idea.
The conclusions I draw from all this are that the passenger, whether on a bus, a train or a tram, should be centre stage, and those taking decisions should always put themselves in the shoes of the passenger and ask whether what they are proposing is something the average passenger will think reasonable and sensible. Small things matter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Norman Baker served as transport minister from May 2010 until October 2013. He was Lib Dem MP for Lewes between 1997 and 2015.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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