London: the case for buses.
 

Everyone knows that you can ride all over London on the oldest Underground system in the world - the famous Tube.

But unless you're traveling a long distance - say, from Paddington to Tower Hill, or out to Greenwich - riding the bus is superior in many respects.

First of all, if you're an impoverished student with more time to spend than money, the best travel deal in the Galaxy is the TfL 7 Day Bus Pass. For £13.80, you can ride anywhere in Greater London, any time of day or night, for a week. You can even get back and forth to Heathrow at no additional outlay. Traveling within London proper, the bus offers the following advantages:

o There are many more lines, and a lot more bus stops than there are Tube stations. This means that you are closer to your transport at both ends of a trip.

o Bus stops are at street level. You never have to climb down into the ground and out again to get to your destination.

o Changing lines on the Tube can range anywhere from a nuisance to an saga, depending on the connection you're making. You can walk for miles and up and down myriad stairs just to get from one train to another. Bus changes often involve no more than getting off one bus and boarding another line at the same stop. Sometimes you have to cross a street or walk a block.

o On a bus, you can see where you're going. On longer rides, it's fun to sit upstairs in the front row and take in the scene. You can even jump off for a closer look if you pass something intriguing.

On the down side, buses are

o Hot and crowded during rush hour - but so is the Tube.

o Slow. Sometimes egregiously so - such as down Oxford Street on a busy afternoon. When I get in traffic, I generally get out and walk, re-boarding further up the line where the congestion has thinned out a little.

o Relatively more complicated. The many lines and stops make navigation somewhat more complex than whipping out your classic Tube map and picking a line. But TfL offers many resources for plotting bus trips at this page: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/9440.aspx

The <b>Bus Maps</b> and <b>Bus Maps</b> links takes you to &quot;spider maps&quot; show both the lines that serve a particular stop and where to board each line. Use &quot;Browse alphabetical list&quot; to quickly find a station by name. The links under <b>London area bus maps</b> will get you large-scale geographic maps that are useful in finding out what line(s) a destination are on. These maps are available free in paper form at Tube stations. But many tourists only need to download and print one map, that shows the principal sights in relation to the bus system: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...al_bus_map.pdf

For small-scale street/bus maps of the neighborhoods around Tube stops, go to http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/im/SI-T.html and click on the station's name, then <b>Local Area Map</b>. These maps are also free at each station.

For &pound;1.50, you can also get a map of the entire system at http://www.busmap.org delivered to your hotel - free.

Another positive point regarding buses:

Night Buses which serve major routes in London all night long. The tube stops running around MN-1am.

Thanks for all that great info.

I too am taking buses in London more and more than the Tube - esp for shorter journeys - for all the reasons Robespierre gives.

Plus after a recent trip where the day after i left London and has been riding the Tube there was a power failure with some folks left underground on crowded Tube trains for some hours in some cases.

The only problem with buses is there does not seem to be a constant frequency of service - the bus stop sign may say Bus #21 comes by an average of every 8 minutes i have more than once waited for a half hour or more and then 2 #21 buses come in a row.

On buses please mind the British habit of queuing and not making a mad dash for the door.

Hmmm...

Thanks to the vagaries of British sentimentality, I get unpaid use of London buses, but have to pay my full Oystercard whack on tubes.

I still use tubes 80% of the time. As a rough guide, buses match the tube for point to point time taken only over distances so short you may as well walk, and on some key routes (above all, the keyest of all: Paddington-Kings Cross) nowhere near match the tube's frequency. And their unpredictability, especially on low-frequency routes, makes them close to useless for getting to appointments on time.

PalQ once argued on this board that London buses were for the poor. Not quite true: they're for the time-rich.

We were waiting for a bus to go from near Harrod's to Sloane Sq. (yes, ordinarily we would have walked, but my DD was coming off surgery for a badly broken ankle). We watched 3 or 4 busses pass us by, all of which had Sloane Sq. on the front, and never knew why those didn't stop but the next one did. Any idea?

I remember the last time I was in London and hardly an impoversihed student or anything else and made the very stupid mistake of taking a taxi from Covent Garden Liverpool Street station.

Yes, those &quot;superior&quot; busses were moving right along at a snail's pace and keeping my taxi boxed in right behind them.
qaffa
After more than 30 minutes of WISHING I had taken the Tube I finally, and at the cab driver's suggestion, got out and walked the remainder of the distance.

Robes, I'm not sure just6 what it IS about your love affair with busses...in Paris, also, as I recall, but it must be about as strong as my own with TRAINS...but get real, Man...rush hour? London? On a bus? Sorry, don't quite agree.

sf7307-

1) Did you flag the bus down? Buses don't always stop if no one flags it.

2) If you did flag the bus, did all the buses have the same route #? If they were different route #s, some may not stop at the bus stop where you were waiting.

sf 3707, four possibilities:

- you were at a request stop and didn't signal the buses to stop

- the buses were full

- at major interchanges, not all routes stop at the same stops

- the buses were out of service but hadn't changed their signboards

or some combination of all of them

I like all you folk who travel on kisses.
The plural of bus is buses.
The plural of buss (a kiss) is busses.
Flanner, do you mean to say that I have been using my Oyster on the bus when I could have gone for free?

It depends and yes there are times the bus is by far the best choice...

Example...

We saw Billy Elliot and were on the way back to our hotel after the performance near the Queensway station of the Central line or the Bayswater stop on the District/Circle line....

No brainer....the 148 bus took about 10 minutes at the most rather than the circle or district line train out of Victoria (district line train would require a change at Earls Court)....but this was at 2230....would it be that short in the middle of the afternoon? I wonder....

I've been on buses headed down Charing Cross Road from the vicinity of Oxford Street for Westminster and it took 30 minutes to just get through Trafalgar Square onto Whitehall...surely the tube two stops to Bond Street and then the Jubilee line would have been quicker, right.....

You just never know.

PalQ once argued on this board that London buses were for the poor. Not quite true: they're for the time-rich.&gt;

Context - a few years ago visionary Mayor of London 'Red' Ken Livingstone not only created congestion charges for motorists to enter central London but raised Tube fares and slashed bus fares - the result some charged was to push poorer folks onto the bus with the wealthier being able to afford faster Tube travel.

Anyone who actually rides London buses will notice a class difference in passengers - hardly an English looking person on some buses i've taken - the poorer non-chattering classes - meanwhile fat cats from Cotswolds ride the Tube even though they could ride free on buses, being 60 and over i guess.

Q- As a foreigner now 60 can i ride the buses free or do i need some card to do so?

You have to be 65 for a bus pass, and a resident ;)

By English looking, you mean that there are fewer white people on buses?
I quite often take the bus from the East End. It's interesting to see what a variety of people you get as the bus travels from East to West, from real old Cockneys to schoolchildren in all colours larking about together.
I also notice how nice and polite people are on the bus, with youngsters giving up their seats to little old ladies like me.
People also talk to one another on buses.

I stayed out at Olympia one July. Bought a 1-week TravelCard for a lot of money on an Oyster card.

Long way into the the area around Trafalgar where all the museums are.

It was a long walk from the hotel to the nearest tube station that went directly so I often took the bus.

Then towards the end of the week, found myself taking the bus all the way through rather than switching to the tube.

Stuff to see for sure.

I lament the ban on booze on buses however. Never saw any real problem with it but then again did not ride much at late night hours.

But i did so enjoy buying a tin of cider and plopping down in the front over the driver seats on double-deck and just watching the bus plow thru the streets - tree limbs swishing across the front windows just in front of me. I can get on any bus that's going anywhere and have fun in the top deck front seat - great great view of London.

Did you ever find yourself with lots of empty seats around you, PQ?

Residents of England aged 60 and over are issued, if they want it, with some kind of transport concession. If you choose the bus pass, it's valid on all local buses in (I think) Britain, or maybe the UK, after 0930 on weekdays. Residents in the London area get a pass entitling them to use all TfL transport offpeak.

You have to present evidence of age and of a permanent local address (ie a driving licence or utility bill) to get the pass.

The concession obviously presents an interesting ethical conundrum. I strongly oppose it - but equally strongly oppose paying for something I don't need to. And saying &quot;I think this pass is unfair&quot; every time I use it is about as plonky as you can get

Hi Robespierre,

Thank you, this is the information I have been looking for.

Last year my sister and I met our mum (who lives in Hove and is 82) in London. She wanted to use the bus as she has a bus pass (over 60) and doesn't like the tube.

We did OK with great advice here on Fodor's but we had a few problems - getting from the Imperial War Museum to the British Museum. I knew it was a straight forward bus ride as I had checked it out before we arrived in London. However, it turned out to be a complicated route as we did not have a good A-Z of London and a bus route map. Thankfully helpful Londoners helped us.

The bus map you have supplied would have helped us a lot as it has pictures of the big attractions.

We will be doing the in March this year and hopefully will have fewer problems.

Lastly, my sister and I were unsure about using the buses in London as we were so used to the tube but really enjoyed the rides. You see so much more and regular people who use it are so willing to help you if you have a query.

Thanks for the posting

Helen

Thank you. Since I planned for my first time trip to London this May, I was confused and overwhelmed with all the suggestions. I am thinking of taking the bus in London and either purchase a day pass or 3-day pass. I am reading more into it. I have only one day trip planned but don't know when. I don't want to get the train ticket in advance and am willing to do it a day or two before that day. Yes, they told me that it is expensive. I will have 7 days in London and the hotel reserved. From reading about you all these years, I know that you advocate bus as a mean of transportation. I believe in it, too. Also, above ground train.

Three day travelcards are rarely good buys....best bet is Oyster PAYG...each bus ride (no transfers) is &pound;1 but there is a daily cap at &pound;3.30, 50p below the price of a one day bus pass. The 7 day bus pass is indeed a great buy but frankly, there may be times when you need the tube no matter how much you hate it and if you only have a bus pass, each ride on the tube is an incredibly expensive &pound;4. Even if you only use the bus for one return trip, for 7 days that would come to &pound;14 on the oyster PAYG....

Incidentally, if all your riding is confined to the bus, there's no need to worry about peak and non peak and the rules regarding 0930 on weekdays...also if you have kids with you, they ride free.

Flanneruk...I am so surprised at you. You are always complaining about this and that and that a person as upstanding and righteous as you are would swallow that and take advantage of the concessions available to senior citizens.

Also as a general aside, other than transport, many places in London have concessions for anybody over 60 including many theatres. Just ask when buying tickets, it never hurts.