Ten Years On:
​The Buses That Drove Some People Round The Bend

​12 December 2021

It's now been a staggering 10 years since Bendy Buses were withdrawn from London service. The last of these were on my local route, the 207 (Hayes By-Pass to Shepherds Bush / later White City), just as the first were, a decade previously.

The 'trial' buses arrived in October 2001. Although they were running a half-hourly supplementary service, I seemed to manage to catch one of them quite regularly, without trying. All passengers boarded through the front door, so it took quite a while to load up at the busy stops. They were withdrawn after six months, but the frequency of the 207 was increased to compensate.

Then the two Red Arrow services, 507 (Victoria to Waterloo) and 521 (Waterloo to London Bridge), became the first to have full allocations. These buses were eminently suited to these two routes, which specialised in moving large numbers of people over short distances. Three-door boarding and alighting revolutionised these services and sped them up significantly.

But Bendy Buses were less suited to other routes. Whilst they were good at moving people about, the concept of 'open boarding' through three doors led to significant fare evasion. People would talk about the "free bus", and they didn't mean the one from Oxford Circus to Crystal Palace. The "Seventy-free" (then Stoke Newington to Victoria) was one of the favourites for fare evasion!

For someone who has always had a strong interest in buses, and especially changes in my local area, it's strange that I was out-of-town on both the day that the Bendy Buses arrived to fully take over the 207, in April 2005, and again on the day they were withdrawn in December 2011 (I was in Pickering and Brussels respectively). But I do remember seeing some startled faces two days after double-deckers returned; the realisation that the free bus was no more.

There were many good points for these buses. They were excellent at hoovering up passengers, quickly, in large numbers. They moved the onus from the bus driver to the passenger to decide whether a busy bus was "full" or not. And of course, they had plenty of space for wheelchairs and pushchairs, and places where people could stand without getting in the way of others - my favourite was in the bendy-section itself.

But as well as the fare evasion problem, TfL used the large capacity of the Bendy Buses as an excuse to reduce service levels in many cases, even though the number of seats available (49) was far fewer than on the double-deckers they replaced.

There were never enough inspectors to provide a strong enough presence that might deter people from boarding without a ticket. It was probably about one ride in 100 when you would actually see one. What was probably needed were 10 or 20 roving conductors or inspectors on every Bendy route at all times. They would have covered their costs.

If the fare evasion problem had been tackled, we would probably have continued to see these vehicles on the streets for a lot longer. Or we would have done, except that a certain politician decided that, if elected, he would get rid of the lot - which he did. This must have cost London taxpayers a fair bit, especially as few of the buses ever found a new home and most ended up on the scrapheap.

In the right places, they worked well, and it's amazing that 10 years have now passed. It's also amazing that I don't seem to have a single photograph of one! I have some VHS video somewhere of them at work soon after they were introduced to the 207, but that seems to be it!

Will their replacements - the New Routemasters - better stand the test of time? Something to ponder another day, I think.