Revealed: London's worst bus stops... where only one in 10 run on time

London’s least reliable bus stops were today revealed - where fewer than one in 10 services are on time.

Number crunchers say they have calculated exactly where you can wait ages for a bus only for two to turn up at once. According to the study, passengers waiting for the 153 to Angel Islington from a stop in Clerkenwell are victims of central London’s least reliable bus timetable.

Buses are either early or late at the stop, near the junction of Percival Street and St John’s Street, on a staggering 92.5 per cent of journeys, according to big-data firm Kognitio.

Its data scientist Chak Leung crunched five billion points of Transport for London data comparing actual bus times against published timetables for 19,687 bus stops, 675 routes and 9,641 buses over three months last year.

These are London's worst bus stops

Statistics show the percentage of buses running on time from each stop

Percival Street towards Angel Islington 7.57 %

Harrington Road towards South Kensington 7.97%

Bishopsgate towards St Paul’s 8.16%

Spencer Street towards Angel Islington 8.23%

Beech Street towards Finsbury Square 8.25%

Rosebery Avenue/Sadler’s Wells towards Barnsbury 8.34%

St Katharine Docks towards Liverpool Street 8.35%

Friend Street/Sadler’s Wells towards Barbican 8.55%

Kennington Road towards Elephant and Castle 8.67%

Finsbury Square towards Finsbury Park station 8.70%

He found that the worst bus stop across the whole of Greater London was Ringway near Heathrow, where the 482 and H32 services towards Southall ran on schedule only 3.6 per cent of the time.

Meanwhile, commuters catching the 63 and 172 southbound from Farringdon Road enjoy the most reliable bus service in Zone One with a 27.7 per cent hit rate.

The city’s best overall performer is in Whitings Road, Barnet, where the 384 to Cockfosters leaves bang on time 32.8 per cent of the time.

TfL says most timetables are “guidelines” for operators to provide regularity of service rather than specific arrival and departure times.

‘You get on and sit there for seven minutes’

Passengers told the Standard their views...

Evie Forbes, 22, junior account executive from Angel: “It’s not reliable, it’s horrific. Yesterday I was on it and we were told the bus driver needed to stop to even out the service. It’s completely irregular. It will say two minutes away [on the app] but you get on and you’re sitting there for seven minutes. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s the worst bus stop. They don’t put enough buses on. They need more.”

Chloe Greenwood, 18, dance student from Clerkenwell: “The bus app and the time it actually comes is often different. It’s so annoying when buses aren’t on time. Sometimes if it’s late at night you can be waiting on your own, and no bus is coming.”

Sarah Campbell, 25, charity worker from Archway: “The buses are really inconsistent. I get the 91 from my house and then change for the 153 if I’m coming the other way. Sometimes you get there in half an hour, sometimes it’s an hour and a half — there’s no way of predicting.”

Aaron Lutchman, 30, vet from Islington: “The bus is supposed to come every seven to 12 minutes but it’s so variable. You get two coming together and then not another one for ages. Then you get one that will overtake the other. If they spread the service out they’d be more consistent.”

Kognitio boss Roger Gaskell said: “You always hear the well known phrase that you wait ages for a bus, and then two come along together. I think the data shows that is the case. The interesting thing that comes out of this is that a timetable that says expect a bus every X minutes is next to useless. There could be very long gaps and then several buses all appear a minute apart.”

Mr Gaskell said the company was considering approaching Tfl with its findings in a bid to improve services.

Claire Mann, TfL’s director of bus operations, said: “These figures bear no relation whatsoever to the way people use our bus network, now more reliable than ever before... with a high-frequency and reliable service that allows Londoners to effectively turn up and go, and no longer need to rely on traditional timetables.

“The average customer arrives at a stop and waits just six minutes for their bus — rather than needing to plan to arrive at a specific time. This is why we don’t generally publish timetables, but instead let Londoners know how frequently their buses will arrive.”

She said travellers could use journey planning apps on smartphones.