Was Cutting and creating more bus routes?

[southlondonbus]

I think the 54 has also lost passengers as people opt to walk to tram stops instead. From Beckenham Hill Road to between Beckenham and Elmers End there would have been passengers boarding here for Croydon but now they are more happy for a walk to either of the tram stops.

Naturally the 54 carries less along Beckenham high street as it only goes a mile or so more to Elmers end.

[busaholic]

May 1, 2019 15:42:23 GMT danorak said:

May 1, 2019 14:40:50 GMT vjaska said:

I understand that but my point was in general rather than particularly looking at Elmers End - my original point being that just because the 54 is shorter in length, doesn't mean it's instantly a shadow of its former self as it still provides many other important links.

The same old comments are continually made about this route being empty & this should be returned here without accounting for today's conditions (btw, not referring to your above point about the 54 as I understand the case about returning it to West Croydon) nor understanding the reasons why many routes were shortened in the first place - people need to remove their nostalgia out of the debate first and look at practicalities instead.

I think we pretty much agree on most of that - the 54 is a bit of a special case in that it was split in the wrong place for reasons that didn't have the passenger as a priority. No one seeing a 54 leaving Woolwich would doubt its importance (except maybe the consultants proposing the loss of the busy first two stops...).
Until now, TfL has generally been quite good at limiting broken links with overlaps and so on, and matching them to the obvious break points. But the Hopper fare seems to be changing that - instead of the routes fitting the passenger, the passenger has to fit to the route.

The 54 was cut back to Elmers End for entirely political or ideological reasons in response to the creation of Tramlink. You could be an enthusiastic supporter of Tramlink, as I was and am, and still consider it was a bad move to truncate the 54 then. Far better to wait and see how travel patterns panned out, then consider the 54's position. It always had many Croydon bound passengers from  Bellingham, Southend Pond and central Beckenham: only the latter were provided with a viable alternative. Imagine if the 119 had been forced to terminate as soon as it met the first tram stop, rather than continuing to Croydon. I'd bet there were some who would have advocated such an idea if only a suitable terminal could have been found.

[southlondonbus]

Yeh the bizarrely the section that the section has taken bus demand from between Addington Village and Sandilands still has a 12 and 10 mins service on the 130 and 466 respectively.

[sid]

May 1, 2019 21:06:07 GMT southlondonbus said:

Yeh the bizarrely the section that the section has taken bus demand from between Addington Village and Sandilands still has a 12 and 10 mins service on the 130 and 466 respectively.

The gross over bussing of that section makes the withdrawal of the 54 from Croydon all the more ridiculous.

[Deleted]

But most long routes were mostly being operated in sections. So the 105 wasn’t withdrawn between Greenford and Shepherds Bush because of reliability issues. One section was just renumbered, and the evening and Sunday through service was withdrawn.

[vjaska]

May 2, 2019 8:06:49 GMT @rgd976 said:

But most long routes were mostly being operated in sections. So the 105 wasn’t withdrawn between Greenford and Shepherds Bush because of reliability issues. One section was just renumbered, and the evening and Sunday through service was withdrawn.

That applied to some routes but others still ran straight through.