TfL's 'shortest London bus route' that only takes 10 minutes to get from A to B

Red London buses Stratford City Bus Station
-Credit: (Image: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)


London's 'shortest' bus route takes between 10 and 12 minutes to travel from its starting point to the end destination - and it has left Tiktok users open-mouthed at its brevity. Transport for London's 389 bus, from High Barnet to Western Way in North London - just two miles from beginning to end - passes through Barnet High Street and High Barnet Station.

The 389 is the only bus service which serves the whole of Hadley Wood village which is a small estate of very expensive housing just within the M25 in Barnet. It runs only on weekdays and the last bus is at around 2pm. The route is so short that the same bus turns into Route 399 (Barnet - Dollis Valley) in between each 389 journey.

The entire journey from Barnet to Hadley Wood is 10 minutes long and about two miles. The return journey from Hadley Wood back to Barnet is 12 minutes. It still only turns up once an hour though. MyLondon has previously reported two other contenders for London's shortest bus route, though one of those was only temporary at the time. But the 389 received new attention on TikTok when user theblacktrainboy posted a video declaring it was TfL's 'shortest' bus journey.

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TikTok users shared their views over the journey after a video was uploaded by theblacktrainboy. One commenter posted: "So, the bus is like an Uber basically?"

Another wrote: "How can you have a bus with 12 min journey time and 60 min frequency? Surely just one bus could do better than that."

A third user said: "I grew up in Barnet and that bus used to be run by a private company, pretty sure it was yellow and brown, and only 1 bus in that route throughout the whole day."

Route 847 is another very short bus route, taking 14 minutes to do the loop from HereEast to Stratford International then Stratford City and back to HereEast.

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