Snow affecting London buses

[Be3G]

Hi all,

Tell me, am I imagining it or did London buses not use to suffer too badly in snowy conditions until about a decade ago? I have been a bit perturbed today by the magnitude of service reductions in Enfield and Chingford (the areas I'm most familiar with) – some of them understandable, some of them less so. When I looked at Countdown at about 12pm at Chingford Mount there were just a few buses total showing across all local stops in 30 minutes whereas the combined frequency of all services on a Sunday should be about ten per half hour per direction. It looked like there had been a virtually complete shutdown of all services operating through the area without any attempts to turn buses short at least to run over what would surely be relatively clear stretches of road.

Citing more specific examples, an understandable curtailment would be the 215, which hasn't been operating between Chingford Mount and Lee Valley Campsite today, likely because of the winding and hilly roads between the two. However looking over in Enfield, I could see that there were hardly an buses along the Hertford Road north of Ponders End: no 121s, no 279s, just the odd 307 or (further up) 191. I used to live not far from this area: the Hertford Road is a busy road and even after heavy snowfall would still be relatively clear owing to the volume of traffic.

I remember commuting to uni when we had some significant snowfall in (I think) February 2007. My 121 turned up bang on time at 6:21am, covered in snow. I'm sure that was more snow than last night, yet all TfL did today was cancel the 121 completely (lvf.io showed none in service at about lunchtime). Even now I see that northbound they're all curtailing at Enfield Highway even though based on past experience the roads would be fine at least up to the next curtailment point of Enfield Lock Station.

I do remember when we had snow in early 2009 and for part of a day all London buses were suspended. Since then it feels to me as though buses have been much less likely to run in the snow compared to times like my uni example. Am I just imagining it or has there been some kind of policy change since then that means if London gets anything more than a thin layer of snow we have to go without buses? Or is it something to do with councils doing less to clear/prevent snow buildup which means roads are now less passable to large vehicles than they were a decade ago? It does make me worry about what might happen if we have a few days of sustained wintry weather – will significant parts of public-transport-using London end up completely cut off?

 

[philthetube]

Tow things mess busses up in the snow, one is other traffic blocking roads and the other is availability of staff due to travel issues.

Bearing in mind how the underground was performing this morning there would be many drivers unable to get to work.

I is also worth bearing in mind, and this does not only affect busses, that people travel much further to work these days than they used to, at least in part because of house prices in London.

 

[Wirewiper]

You are imagining it, I have lived in London virtually all my life and I certainly remember buses being suspended due to the weather (or more accurately, the resulting road conditions) during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

The big problem, is not the snow per se, but the way it part-thaws and then re-freezes causing ice to form. Gritting/salting does not always alleviate this problem, and in any case is useless when rain falls just prior to turning to snow, as it washes the grit and salt away.

Also Greater London occupies a large area - it is up to 40 miles across - and weather conditions can vary to a surprising extent across the area. Whilst you were suffering the decimation of your services in Enfield and Chingford, and across North West London and parts of East London, in other areas services were running near-normally and people might have been wondering what all the fuss was about. Of course, the hilly suburban areas are the most prone to disruption in icy weather.

 

[plcd1]

Reading the comments above I think both scenarios are probably right. Yes routes have been suspended before including the infamous event not so long back when every bus was taken off the road. The issue yesterday was that the snow was not especially heavy but had been forecast for days. Given what TfL had committed itself to a few years ago, after they were rightly slated for taking every bus off the road, I have to ask what on earth went wrong on Sunday. The snow was not that severe and in the past there were clear plans agreed with all boroughs that bus routes would be the priority for gritting and clearance. Have those plans been abandoned or just ignored? Seems Barnet Council had severe problems with non gritting / clearance of roads. If social media is to be believed they have moved all their gritting lorries to *Harrow* so have no resources in the borough. That seems a monumental mistake to me.

I do wonder if the huge financial cuts and loss of knowledgeable staff at TfL and in some councils have partly contributed to what was a less than satisfactory response to what was a fairly inconsequential amount of snow north of the Thames (within Greater London)? If / when we get more icy / snowy weather TfL have to do better than they did yesterday. The only saving grace for them was that it was not a normal working day for most people and there was no schools traffic.

 

[Busaholic]

Hi all,

Tell me, am I imagining it or did London buses not use to suffer too badly in snowy conditions until about a decade ago? I have been a bit perturbed today by the magnitude of service reductions in Enfield and Chingford (the areas I'm most familiar with) – some of them understandable, some of them less so. When I looked at Countdown at about 12pm at Chingford Mount there were just a few buses total showing across all local stops in 30 minutes whereas the combined frequency of all services on a Sunday should be about ten per half hour per direction. It looked like there had been a virtually complete shutdown of all services operating through the area without any attempts to turn buses short at least to run over what would surely be relatively clear stretches of road.

Citing more specific examples, an understandable curtailment would be the 215, which hasn't been operating between Chingford Mount and Lee Valley Campsite today, likely because of the winding and hilly roads between the two. However looking over in Enfield, I could see that there were hardly an buses along the Hertford Road north of Ponders End: no 121s, no 279s, just the odd 307 or (further up) 191. I used to live not far from this area: the Hertford Road is a busy road and even after heavy snowfall would still be relatively clear owing to the volume of traffic.

I remember commuting to uni when we had some significant snowfall in (I think) February 2007. My 121 turned up bang on time at 6:21am, covered in snow. I'm sure that was more snow than last night, yet all TfL did today was cancel the 121 completely (lvf.io showed none in service at about lunchtime). Even now I see that northbound they're all curtailing at Enfield Highway even though based on past experience the roads would be fine at least up to the next curtailment point of Enfield Lock Station.

I do remember when we had snow in early 2009 and for part of a day all London buses were suspended. Since then it feels to me as though buses have been much less likely to run in the snow compared to times like my uni example. Am I just imagining it or has there been some kind of policy change since then that means if London gets anything more than a thin layer of snow we have to go without buses? Or is it something to do with councils doing less to clear/prevent snow buildup which means roads are now less passable to large vehicles than they were a decade ago? It does make me worry about what might happen if we have a few days of sustained wintry weather – will significant parts of public-transport-using London end up completely cut off?

I can't provide first-hand information over the last couple of decades, as I wasn't living in or visiting London at relevant times, but I believe it was during Boris Johnson's first spell as Mayor that the edict went out to suspend all services on one particular day, and this was said to be the first time that a ban on garages putting buses out for weather-related reasons had ever been invoked London-wide. This may have been partly Johnson justifying his policy of getting rid of bendybuses as a very prominent photo of a bendy on the 38 jack-knifing as it left Victoria the previous evening was featured in his mouthpiece newspaper the Evening Standard. The blanket ban was widely criticised by passengers and, sotto voce, by many bus operating staff as, inevitably, the snow and ice had disappeared from large parts of the capital by the afternoon and, in any case, some areas had been relatively unaffected.

As for earlier periods, everybody cites the winter of 1962/3 and it was extreme, by London standards anyway, with snow lying from very late December well into February, so six to seven weeks I guess. I lived in Eltham, S.E.9 and went to school in Catford, S.E.6., a journey of a few miles mostly along the South Circular Road that was often problematic at the best of times in the rush hours. I do remember a few consecutive days when it was impossible to get to school by the 160 or 124 routes, but there were buses running in Eltham every single day on one route or another, to the extent that my suburban road (Gourock Road) was visited by an RT bus on the 21A on at least two separate days, desperately trying to access Well Hall Station while avoiding Well Hall Road. It was not always possible to establish which route a bus was working, from the front anyway, with the RT's capacious blinds entirely snowed and iced over!

A recent book 'Streets of London Transport' by Mick Webber has some wonderfully evocative photos over the 1933 to 1969 period, the very last in the book having been taken in January 1968 on Blackheath and shows two RTs with crews off their respective buses trying to shovel the snow away from the road, where a 54 has slid to a diagonal halt, and the pavement on which a 75 going in the opposite direction is trying its luck to no effect! Rather a long way from West Croydon, the bus's ultimate destination. That was probably the same day as when I helped the conductor and passengers of a Green Line RML on the 705 to push it away from the lights at Westmoreland Road/Mason's Hill in Bromley, about which I had a letter published in 'Classic Bus' mag a few years ago.

 

[Be3G]

Also Greater London occupies a large area - it is up to 40 miles across - and weather conditions can vary to a surprising extent across the area. Whilst you were suffering the decimation of your services in Enfield and Chingford, and across North West London and parts of East London, in other areas services were running near-normally and people might have been wondering what all the fuss was about. Of course, the hilly suburban areas are the most prone to disruption in icy weather.

Be that as it may, my concern was that the suspensions – particularly along the Hertford Road in Enfield – were unusually severe for just a middling quantity of snow. I wasn't there at the time so can't comment on what the road conditions were actually like (hence in my OP wondering if this wasn't so much a TfL problem but more a council snow prevention/clearance problem) but living now only a few miles away, and judging from reports of the snow in London I can say with almost complete certainty that the snow experienced in the area was not as severe as I witnessed several times whilst living there yet with more buses running at the time.

I can't provide first-hand information over the last couple of decades, as I wasn't living in or visiting London at relevant times, but I believe it was during Boris Johnson's first spell as Mayor that the edict went out to suspend all services on one particular day, and this was said to be the first time that a ban on garages putting buses out for weather-related reasons had ever been invoked London-wide.

I was hoping you'd have something to add to this thread from your experience. Yep that was the 2009 instance I mentioned. It was certainly the first time I'd ever been aware of it happening during my public-transport-using lifetime.

 

[Busaholic]

I was hoping you'd have something to add to this thread from your experience. Yep that was the 2009 instance I mentioned. It was certainly the first time I'd ever been aware of it happening during my public-transport-using lifetime.

Never say never where politicians are concerned, but lessons MAY have been learned from that, to the extent that it would probably take much more severe weather over a more prolonged period for it to happen again. Having said that, they'll go and do it again next week.