Metric for Buses
For the first time in July 2022, the Healthy Streets Scorecard published data on the proportion of the total length of bus route in each borough which is “prioritised” for buses either with a bus lane or where ‘bus gates’ allow buses to travel through an area, or a Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) without encountering heavy traffic.
In November 2022, we wrote to council leaders in all 33 London local authority districts and the City of London, to highlight the need for more action on bus priority measures.
View the two 2022 charts, below, that show
- bus priority coverage as a proportion of total bus route
- bus route length, length on bus lanes and length through LTNs
for every London borough.
The new Bus Priority map shows all London bus routes, bus lanes and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods so these can be easily deciphed.
Key
🟨= bus route
🟧= bus lane
🟦= LTN
The score each borough receives is a proportion of the bus route with bus priority in that borough.
To summarise the Bus Priority Results for Inner London:
40%-50% of bus routes are prioritised in Hackney, Islington & Lambeth. 👏👏👏
∼30% of bus routes are prioritised in Lewisham, Wandsworth, Camden and Haringey. 👏👏
∼20% of bus routes are prioritised in Tower Hamlets, Westminster and Hammersmith & Fulham. 👏
just 5% of bus routes prioritised in Kensington & Chelsea.
Bus Priority Results for Outer London:
Ealing (18%), Barking & Dagenham (15%) & Merton (15%) have the highest scores. 👏
Bexley, Bromley, Redbridge, Barnet & Sutton had lowest scores (less than 5% of bus routes are prioritised) with Bexley on 1%.
The Healthy Streets Scorecard coalition is asking boroughs and TfL to work together to introduce more bus priority measures, especially on roads which have been identified as needing urgent action.
Better bus services will mean healthy streets and a clean city where fewer people take the car; there’s less pollution particularly on main roads; and more people using the bus, which means more money for TfL to improve services and halt cuts.
The coalition is firmly against cuts to bus services, however the map and data will reflect any changes to London’s bus routes in future.
We intend to publish annual updates to the data to show where action has been taken and from 2023, these bus priority scores will contribute to the overall scores we assign to boroughs as part of our annual London Boroughs Healthy Streets Scorecard.
View the 2022 Bus Priority results
Understand more about this indicator
