Bus journey times improved in Kensington

While average bus journey times throughout London continue to rise, simple measures adopted by Kensington and Chelsea Council has seen this trend reversed across the Royal Borough.

The work was done in partnership with Transport for London (TfL) as part of a Government agreement to improve services.

As a result of these changes, the Council has been awarded £223,000 from the Government.

The Council introduced simple changes, such as changing traffic light signal times and moving bus stops that meant variability in journey times fell by five per cent in the borough, whereas it rose by nine per cent in other boroughs, giving a net improvement of 13 per cent.

The Council looked at bus routes throughout the borough, including Fulham Road, King’s Road, Sloane Street, Kensington High Street, Kensington Church Street and the northern part of Ladbroke Grove.

Council officers undertook route tests with representatives of TfL and the bus operators to identify ‘hot spots’ where there were delays on each route.

TfL also monitored journey time surveys using their permanent beacons located on lampposts. These ‘after’ surveys were completed before the central London congestion charge was extended into Kensington and Chelsea.

Following the investigations, the Council introduced measures to improve the variability of bus journey times including changing parking and loading restrictions, bus stop locations, and levels of parking enforcement along certain routes.

The project showed that apparently quite small changes to bus stop layouts could have a significant impact.

Most bus stops in London were originally designed with the old Routemaster buses in mind, where passengers boarded from the back of the bus.

However, new buses mean that passengers board at the front, so many old bus stop shelters and flags are in the wrong location, causing an obstruction to passengers or requiring buses to stop in the wrong place.

The Council tackled this issue by redesigning several bus stops, including stops on Ladbroke Grove and Kensington Church Street.

These new bus stops also meet disability discrimination legislation that requires bus stops to be accessible to all users.

At a number of locations, restrictions on parking and loading had not been reviewed for some time and were no longer appropriate to local circumstances. Again, even small changes, properly backed up by focused enforcement, have removed blockages and helped the buses to keep moving.

Changes to traffic signal timings also made a difference.

For instance, the Council identified a particular problem with delays to buses turning right from Kensington Road into Kensington Church Street, and made changes to overcome the delays.

On one road, the Council removed a stretch of bus lane without any reduction in buses’ reliability.

Councillor Daniel Moylan, Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Transportation, said: “Bus passengers need to know roughly how long their journey is going to take them. I am very pleased that while buses’ reliability appears to have been falling elsewhere, we have seen significant improvements in Kensington and Chelsea - I would like to thank Council officers for their efforts. I hope that this success can be replicated across London. We, in Kensington and Chelsea, will continue to look for ways of further improving the reliability of our buses.”

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