TfL has revealed a plan to make London buses faster

London has some of the slowest roads in the world. Earlier this year a study named the UK capital Europe’s worst city for traffic congestion for the fourth year in a row, with the city’s residents spending an average total of 101 hours in gridlock over the course of 2024. 

While London’s miserable traffic mostly hampers car drivers – after all, buses and taxis can speed up journeys with bus lanes – it impacts public transport, too. In the centre of town bus speeds have fallen to a measly 7 miles per hour, which has coincided with a recent drop in bus ridership.

All of which is why plans have been revealed to speed up London’s buses. As reported in the Standard, TfL is planning on making some major changes that are intended to tackle slow buses. The focus is primarily on two things which are the bane of every bus passenger: traffic lights and roadworks.

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Speeding up traffic lights

Changing traffic light settings and making them more responsive – especially during rush hour – could apparently add 10 percent more capacity to every junction.

Carl Eddleston, TfL's director of network management, likened the computers that currently operate traffic lights to old Atari games consoles. He claimed that fancier new computers (akin to ‘Playstations’) will respond quicker, telling the Standard: ‘That means instead of responding every eight seconds, the junction responds every one second.’

In short, higher-tech traffic lights could improve traffic flow and reduce the amount of time buses spend stuck at red lights.  

Reducing roadworks

Another way Eddleston suggested speeding up buses is by encouraging councils to charge utility companies for digging up roads. The aim is to reduce the amount of time roadworks take, as well as to generate income for councils.

TfL already operates a similar scheme on roads it is responsible for, charging utility companies for works between 7am and 7pm. The cost ranges from £350 too £2,500, depending on how much disruption the works are likely to cause, and Eddleston says TfL’s scheme has cut bus journey times by six to eight per cent.

In total, London’s 33 boroughs are responsible for 95 percent of the capital’s roads. If they all started charging utility companies for works, it could ‘lower congestion, increase bus speeds and improve safety across the network,’ Eddleston told the Standard. You can read the newspaper’s full report here.

TfL says there is a direct correlation between increases in bus delays and falls in passenger numbers, and previously the government body has revealed several ways it is attempting to speed up the capital’s bus network. These include more continuous bus lanes, increasing bus lanes’ operational hours (and making some 24/7) and updating traffic signals to give buses priority.

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