Faster journey times, more travel choices and new night bus routes

Night Bus services in London have increased beyond recognition in the last 30 years. This reflects and supports changes to London’s vibrant night time economy. The current comprehensive Night Bus network means that most of zones 1 and 2 are within walking distance of a Night Bus route, and London’s suburban Night Bus service is also amongst the most comprehensive in the world.

There is every indication that night time travel in London will continue to grow. From September 2015, we will be running a Friday and Saturday Night Tube service on the Jubilee, Victoria and most of the Piccadilly, Central and Northern lines. This means that many of our customers will now have a choice between Night Tube or Night Bus. Our analysis indicates that customers who take the tube instead of the bus for all or part of their journey will save 20 minutes on average, and in some cases up to an hour.

When Night Tube starts, we are proposing to continue all Night Bus services, and introduce up to 20 new services and one extended service, to help customers travel to and from Night Tube stations. This would continue the expansion of the network. If our proposals go ahead, they will contribute to another year on year increase in the number of Night Buses on the road at weekends. This increase would include improvements during this year to other services not affected by Night Tube.

Many suburban Night Tube stations are already well connected to surrounding areas by existing Night Buses. Of our 20 proposed new Night Bus services, 17 would run on Friday and Saturday nights, with three running seven nights a week. These would help passengers start or finish their Night Tube journeys, as well as providing new travel opportunities to and from suburban local centres. All these new services would follow the same route and run between the same points as the day service.

On some Night Bus services extra buses run on Friday and Saturday nights to meet increased weekend demand. On 17 out of 117 existing Night Bus routes, where we have forecast that some passengers will chose to use Night Tube instead, it would no longer be necessary to run as many extra buses at weekends. This is based on detailed analysis of Oyster card and passenger survey data. These 17 services would continue to operate at their standard weekday frequency or more, providing a local, fully accessible service to all stops along the route.

Please review the details below, and have your say. Your views will be taken into account before a final decision is made.