Buses performance data

Network performance statistics and customer feedback can tell us a lot about how well our bus services are operating - and what we can do to improve them.

Measuring performance

We measure network performance by comparing the number of kilometres a route has done in the last quarter.

We compare each quarter to the same quarter of the previous year, rather than the last quarter of the same year. This is because factors affecting performance, like traffic conditions, can vary depending on the time of year, so this system makes it possible to identify underlying trends.

Scheduled kilometres may not be met because journeys are cancelled or suspended due to:

  • Traffic congestion
  • Staff availability
  • Engineering problems or mechanical breakdown

Quality of service indicators (QSI) are used to monitor service reliability.

Customer satisfaction

We ask a sample of passengers to give a score out of 100 on a wide range of bus service features, based on the journey they have just made. Passengers are carefully selected each quarter to represent all bus passengers in London.

Recent figures can be found in the latest quarter summary document below.

Defining the passenger journey

A passenger journey is defined as one ride on a single vehicle - not a bus trip from A to B as this may include more than one bus ride.

Statistics include all London Buses' contracted services but exclude any non-scheduled kilometres, London Service Permit routes and other special services.

Bus speeds reports

We monitor the speeds of buses to understand the impacts of changing road network conditions. Bus speeds include time spent stationary (for example at traffic lights and at bus stops). Bus speeds are available for the entire network, by borough, and by route.

  • All data is in miles per hour
  • All AM data is taken for Mondays to Fridays, School and Non School days, between 07:00 and 10:00
  • At Route level, some routes may be appear twice. This is because a service change happened during a period. A service change may include a change to a route structure, contract or operator

Factors Affecting Performance

Quarter 4 2022/23:   07 January 2023 to 31 March 2023

 

Bus Network Performance for Quarter 4 was generally better than Q3 2022-23 but was worse than the last pre-pandemic Q4 in 2019-20. Bus services were reduced during Q1 of 2020-21 due to Covid but were back to normal levels by the start of Q3 the same year.

The percentage of scheduled services that were operated was higher than Q3 as expected due to seasonal variations but was still much lower than normal in the main due to bus driver staffing issues. This included increased sickness/absence, a shortage of drivers at multiple bus operators and continuation of a series of disruptive bus strikes at Abellio London. Other issues impacting performance in Q4 included higher than normal mechanical losses, multiple burst water mains in the early part of the quarter, various National Rail strikes and a London Underground strike.

Until 2017, average bus speeds had been in consistent decline. The deterioration had been reversing over the previous two years, although speeds remained much slower than in 2014. The Covid pandemic restrictions saw bus speeds increase significantly in 2020 and whilst these began to fall back at the start of 2021, they have remained slightly higher than pre-pandemic levels and remained so in Q4 except for inner NW and outer NE London which have fallen below pre-pandemic levels.

The dual Covid impacts of reduced passenger numbers and less traffic disruption had a large boosting effect on reliability in 2020-21 and to a lesser extent in 2021-22. Thus, Q4 reliability performance was worse compared with Q4 a year ago. Due to the bus driver staffing situation highlighted above Q4 performance was also much worse than the pre-pandemic level of Q4 2019-20 when EWT had been achieving some of the best ever results. The gradual return towards more normal levels of EWT performance began once restrictions were lifted in 2021-22 Q4. Before the start of the pandemic, inner London EWT had been improving whilst Outer London had recorded a deterioration. Covid restrictions brought about significant improvements across all areas of London during 2020-21 but in Q4 2022-23 all areas were worse than pre-pandemic levels, predominantly due to staffing issues. Punctuality of low frequency services also saw a similar boost due to Covid impacts in 2020-21 and 2021-22 but Q4 performance was worse than pre-pandemic levels. Night bus performance had returned to more normal levels at a faster rate than day routes and in Q4 the percentage of night buses on-time was below pre-pandemic levels.

International Bus Benchmarking Group

London is a member of the International Bus Benchmarking Group (IBBG), an international knowledge sharing network of bus companies. It was established in 2004 and is facilitated by Imperial College London.

Benchmarking is a continuous systematic process for evaluating the products, services, processes or organisations that are recognised as representing best practice for the purpose of organisational improvement. A blend of operational and customer metrics are used to track the performance of the bus network.

Every year, a review of buses performance monitoring is evaluated internally and presented to TfL's Independent Investment Programme Advisory Group (IIPAG) by Imperial College London to justify expenditure and ensure quality of service provided to passengers.

Demand-responsive bus performance

In 2019-20 we ran two service trials in Sutton and Ealing to explore how demand-responsive buses could:

  • Complement current public transport services
  • Reduce car dependency

We suspended and closed the trials in spring 2020 because of Government advice on non-essential travel.

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