Yahoo News 'Inconvenient' Croydon buses 'cutting journeys short' as 'services plagued by traffic for years'
Buses on a South London route are reportedly cutting short their journeys and experiencing delays as they have been affected by traffic. Transport for London (TfL) has been told that Route 154 services have become 'inconvenient' for customers.
Buses travel between West Croydon Bus Station and Morden London Underground station. A customer got in touch with TfL via a freedom of information request.
They said: "[I'd] like to request information about what is wrong with 154. It has been so many station changes in past two weeks. At least half of the time I use, it starts with final destination to Morden and leave me in the rose hill. It is a great inconvenience to us. It shouldn't be done this often."
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The requester then asked the following:
How many times it has final stop changes in past two weeks (including a breakdown of the reasons for these changes)?
What is the percentile 154 is in in terms of final destination changes among other lines?
Do you have any plan to improve 154 and make sure this changes are less?
Would you refund my past four ticket fees?
The route has 'seen more delays'
A TfL case officer replied: "The 154 is generally performing better than its minimum performance standard for reliability, and service control strategies are being used as appropriate to protect the service across the length of the route. In recent periods, route 154 has seen more delays when compared against its historic average, which we understand is due to traffic along its route.
"This has impacted the route since at least November 2022, meaning that the route tends to cover less than its expected total mileage. A route may also be curtailed when the operator employs a service control strategy that helps them to maintain as even a service as possible across the full length of a route.
"If there are severe delays in Croydon preventing a 154 bus from reaching Morden on schedule, for example, the service control strategy implemented may involve curtailing a bus so that one end of the route still receives a bus service. Some service control strategies can inevitably cause gaps in the service a result, but these are carried out at the discretion of the bus operator’s route controllers.
"It is also important to note that buses cannot terminate anywhere; route 154 in particular has curtailment points at Sutton Bus Garage and on Shotfield (near Wallington station), where multiple connecting services are available. We have also reached out to Go-Ahead, the operator of this route, to request a formal response."
MyLondon has contacted Go-Ahead for comment.
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