Go Ahead London non TFL routes.

[stadler]

The school routes also have a route map on their website, but unusually, they also include notes for drivers, such as 'risk of grounding'. See attached for an example.

https://goaheadlondon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/618_Route_Map.pdf

Oh i never even noticed that page before. They keep it very hidden. If you click on "routes" then "bus routes" it just redirects to the TFL website. You have to click on "events and hire" then "school routes" to find it.

School routes - Go Ahead London

Surrey School Routes Go-Ahead London will continue operating Surrey School routes 618, 668 & 669 Route 615 will transfer and be operated by Falcon Bus, for their website and route information please Click Here Route 619 will transfer and be operated by Metrobus, for their website and route...

goaheadlondon.com

So it seems that they do indeed publish their faretables for the 618 and 668 and 669 online if you know where to look. Not quite as hidden as i thought. It appears that £6.00 Single or £10.00 Return is a flat fare no matter how far you travel. They also have £40.00 Weekly or £136.00 Monthly which seems crazy for just one bus a day in each direction on school days only. You can get weekly and monthly tickets for less than that covering an entire bus company across multiple counties. They definitely seem to want to discourage ordinary passengers.

Interestingly it seems that Go Ahead London also used to run the 615 and 619 in the area. The 615 transferred to Falcon Buses recently. The 619 transferred to their sister company Metrobus Crawley recently. I think this was only in the last few years that Go Ahead London stopped operating them.

I also have a vague memory of Go Ahead London operating the 318 service (Epsom - Tattenham Corner - Banstead) and the 516 service (Dorking - Betchworth - Box Hill - Headley - Leatherhead - Ashtead - Epsom) at one point in the mid 2000s i think. They have switched bus operators so many times (eg, Buses Excetera, Countryliner, Epsom Buses, Sunray Travel, Surrey Connect, etc) but there was definitely a period of Go Ahead London operating them. These were ordinary day bus routes rather than school routes.

 

[aron2smith]

But the simple truth is that if these buses were in huge demand then they would be operating commercially; cross-boundary services can be operated commercially from outside London, and there are countless examples where that happens, especially at Heathrow. As they're not running commercially then that means there isn't the demand, so we are then reliant on local authority funding.

Sorry but this is rubbish, private operators (especially the big ones) for the most part don't try innovative things to increase demand, they too often won't try without getting public money first. Especially a company like Arriva that does the bare minimum, the change to Carousel in the Chilterns somewhat says it all. Heathrow's efforts are to be applauded though. One of the clearly successful parts of the Hertfordshire BSIP was coordination of bus corridors to a set, easy to understand frequency. In some cases this meant new routes like the 907. Before it existed, it was assumed demand was met by the railway from Hertford to Stevenage, turns out their was a bit of hidden demand from Ware too, where the train is no use. Now the route is successful but no one for profit would've took the risk, that's for sure.

Places like Cheshunt, the artificial divide in the area makes buses very unattractive to use for the more popular local journeys, like to Enfield. Just 1 route doesn't terminate in Waltham Cross and it goes to Waltham Abbey! The A10 traffic shows plenty of people go between the two. Obviously, TFL fares are hard to match at the scale most private operators run at, which is significantly smaller than TFL's, so it either needs to be TFL or the 2 authorities having an overlap with Hertfordshire also having a franchised network and Hertfordshire taking charge of routes that cross into Essex. Apparently bus franchising is something the Lib Dems running the County Council are keen on seriously looking at.

There will always be a boundary and someone will always be on the wrong side of it. Move TfL's boundary to include Cheshunt but what about Broxbourne and Hoddesdon? Include them and what about Hertford? Harlow? Include them and what about Sawbridgeworth and Bishop's Stortford? Include them and what about Saffron Walden? Suddenly you're within a few miles of Cambridge and now you have the boundary between the town and its biggest traffic draw.

So this is an excuse not to change anything then? Regardless, London has a massive pull on the south east, we need the strategic governance that reflects that, services with it. With everywhere in England getting a mayor, seems like the perfect time to join places up.

Also £1 billion to subsidise London buses? How much of that is due to a large amount of bus users not paying fares? So all under 18 and 60+ and the disabled? Much more generous concessions than the rest of the country, but in an otherwise expensive city. Night buses? Over 120 routes are over night, many are quiet outside the weekends. And for arguments sake, what does tendering cost compared to it just being run in house by councils, like we see in Edinburgh and Reading? Does the subsidy even matter when they are trying to keep a city of 9 million with a large outside commuter base moving anyway?

 

[aron2smith]

I'm not certain why a 20 min frequency is awkward (40 mins I get). However, that aside, the cost of even those uplifts are going to be absolutely huge. It's not going to happen, and that's that.

Every 20 minutes for a bus is where you always have to check the timetable every time and hope it's actually on time. Technically true for something that runs every 30 minutes, but a timetable at that frequency is easier to remember, same with hourly actually. Easier to time with trains too, whereas how many trains run at every 20 minutes? TFL's 298 and 313 run at the same 20 minute frequency as the Arriva 251, but the TFL routes are much more reliable and if 1 doesn't show up, the other will. That's the difference. That was the oddity with Metroline's 242 timetable vs the Uno one. Uno is more useful as it actually connects the area properly but Metroline in the daytime was every 30 minutes, so if the Arriva service didn't turn up, the Metroline did with little longer to wait.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Every 20 minutes for a bus is where you always have to check the timetable every time and hope it's actually on time. Technically true for something that runs every 30 minutes, but a timetable at that frequency is easier to remember, same with hourly actually. Easier to time with trains too, whereas how many trains run at every 20 minutes? TFL's 298 and 313 run at the same 20 minute frequency as the Arriva 251, but the TFL routes are much more reliable and if 1 doesn't show up, the other will. That's the difference. That was the oddity with Metroline's 242 timetable vs the Uno one. Uno is more useful as it actually connects the area properly but Metroline in the daytime was every 30 minutes, so if the Arriva service didn't turn up, the Metroline did with little longer to wait.

I really don't see the issue with that - it's still the same times past every hour. If your bus is at xx13 xx28 xx43 xx58, or xx13 xx33 xx53, it is still a regular repeating pattern. Not the same with a 40 or 45 min headway, and god forbid the First Group AI ridiculousness of random timings. However, we're going seriously off topic so I'll stop there!

The A10 may be busy, but is it busy with people who would leave their car at home? Highly unlikely.

Indeed - at of those, a number will either be heading from Cheshunt et al to the M25, or from the M25 into North London.

 

[nick291]

Sadly the list is way out of date.

At least SN 06 BLV, LK 08 FLP, LX 09 EZU, LX 09 EZV, LX 09 EZW, LX 09 EZZ, LX 09 FAF, SN 66 WNE and SN 66 WNF have left the fleet - may well be more. Also shouldn't the Fasttrack I Trams be added?

Hope this helps

Thanks Dave, I remember back in 2018 seeing YX14 RTV at Victoria on the 811 RHS Chelsea Flower Show shuttle but can't seem to find it's whereabouts/current owner now.

 

[stadler]

Thanks Dave, I remember back in 2018 seeing YX14 RTV at Victoria on the 811 RHS Chelsea Flower Show shuttle but can't seem to find it's whereabouts/current owner now.

That one actually seems to still be with them. I have found photos on Flickr from just four weeks ago of it doing rail replacement for Southeastern in the Kent area. It is in allover plain green livery with Go Ahead London logos. So they still have it.

 

[DaveLondon]

Thanks Dave, I remember back in 2018 seeing YX14 RTV at Victoria on the 811 RHS Chelsea Flower Show shuttle but can't seem to find it's whereabouts/current owner now.

Yes I am pretty certain E281-3 (YX 14 RTV/RTZ/RUA) are still in the commercial fleet.

David

 

[darloscott]

They used to operate some works contracts though thinking back it could well have been related to Battersea Power Station - obviously no longer needed!

Two I’ve managed to find in the LSPs are
847 - HereEast (PVR 2 or 3?)
849 - Roehampton Uni (PVR 2)

 

[duncombec]

I have just had a big shock at the ticket prices that Go Ahead London are charging. I had to get just the short distance from Buckland to Brockham about thirty minutes ago this morning and was waiting for the Compass Bus 32 but the Go Ahead London 669 turned up first so i stopped that.

They charge £6.00 Single or £10.00 Return to go on a four minute Buckland to Brockham bus ride. I was shocked when the driver quoted those prices but he showed me his screen and it seems that it is indeed the correct prices. They have not joined the fare cap (and i know that some other operators have not) but that is still utterly extortionate. Even without the fare cap (at the old higher prices that other operators used to charge) that still seems extremely high.

No wonder they do not publish their bus fares online with those kind of prices. How can you justify that kind of crazy price. That is more than one pound a minute. Probably up there as one of the most expensive bus rides in the country.

I'm not entirely sure why this should come as a surprise. It is very evidently a school route, which are generally not part of the fare cap, and the vast majority of passengers will be scholars travelling to the school, so there is little need for graduated fares. Many will also be travelling on passes, either purchased or authority-led, so the overall cost of the single ticket is unlikely to be issued regularly. £6 for the full length ride of an hour seems acceptable in the circumstances, given the area concerned. You may notice the other services also have zonal fares, with only one intermediate fare stage.

There is no secrecy: it's both on the company website (albeit well hidden... I suspect the the majority of advertising is done through the school direct, hence very little need for there to be much public notice), and uploaded to BODS, accessible in the usual way: https://bustimes.org/services/669-dorking-walton-on-the-hill/fares

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Oct 2025 ==

They used to operate some works contracts though thinking back it could well have been related to Battersea Power Station - obviously no longer needed!

Two I’ve managed to find in the LSPs are
847 - HereEast (PVR 2 or 3?)
849 - Roehampton Uni (PVR 2)

It has been more than a year since TfL uploaded the LSP bulletin (I'm going to suggest that's because of ongoing post-cyber attack issues rather than ranting about laziness), but there is a full list of LSPs as at June 2024 in the bulletin here: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/lsp-bulletin.pdf on pages 19-21. Many are for event services only, but they were holders of 21 LSPs - the largest number of individual permits held by an operator (NatEx only have 14, but they are heavily grouped by common routes within the London area).

 

[markymark2000]

It has been more than a year since TfL uploaded the LSP bulletin (I'm going to suggest that's because of ongoing post-cyber attack issues

They are still sending out more updated bulletins in the same format, but seemingly only doing so via email (would be far easier if TFL uploaded all of the old versions in one place and had a basic list of all LSP services online, same as other areas where registrations have been devolved to the local areas).

I've attached the most recent bulletin below.