Transport for London has told residents it ran nearly 20% more buses during rush hour in the six months after the Putney Bridge junction redesign – despite the same bus routes simultaneously becoming the most complained about services in London because passengers report dramatically fewer buses actually running.
This extraordinary contradiction, revealed through Freedom of Information requests by Putney.news, exposes what appears to be systematic manipulation of transport statistics designed to conceal the true impact of the controversial junction changes.
The data suggests TfL and bus operators have been gaming performance metrics on an industrial scale, using phantom trips, truncated journeys, and cancelled services to artificially inflate trip numbers while avoiding recording the delays that passengers experience daily.
The Impossible Numbers
According to TfL’s own operational data, the transport authority claims to have run:
- 18.1% more buses into Putney during rush hour periods (7-10am and 4-7pm)
- 15.8% more buses out of Putney during the same peak times
- 11.3% more buses overall across all time periods
Yet during this exact same period, three of the analyzed bus routes – the 14, 265 and 93 – became London’s most complained about services, with passengers citing:
- Longer waits between buses
- Services that simply don’t arrive
- Buses that vanish from live tracking systems
- Passengers routinely dumped before their destinations
The numbers simply don’t add up. How can TfL be running one-fifth more buses while passengers experience dramatically worse service?
Rush hour reveals the manipulation
The statistical manipulation becomes most apparent when examining rush hour data, where TfL’s figures show impossible improvements:
Into Putney (7-10am and 4-7pm):
- Route 14: Journey times allegedly decreased from 7.7 minutes to 6.7 minutes (-13%)
- Route 22: Journey times increased from 4.8 minutes to 5.2 minutes (+8.3%)
- Route 39: Journey times decreased from 6.5 minutes to 6.4 minutes (-1.5%)
The claimed 13% improvement for Route 14 during rush hour is particularly suspicious, given this service is the second most complained about in London. TfL wants residents to believe that during the busiest periods, following a junction redesign that has caused widespread congestion complaints, the worst-rated bus service in the area somehow became 13% faster.
How the gaming works
Industry sources confirm that bus operators face financial penalties if services run late, creating powerful incentives to manipulate statistics through:
- Phantom trips: Buses making very short journeys specifically to inflate trip numbers
- Passenger dumping: Dropping passengers off before official measurement stops
- Strategic cancellations: Not running services at all rather than recording delays
- Invisible buses: Services that disappear from tracking to avoid performance measurements
This manipulation has become so endemic that Wandsworth Council now holds special monthly meetings to investigate what officials describe as “bus chaos” in the area.
Yet despite this systematic effort to massage the statistics, the manipulation cannot completely hide the reality. Even TfL’s heavily manipulated data still shows:
- 7.4% increase in journey times for buses leaving Putney overall
- Consistent delays across multiple routes in the outbound direction
- Performance deterioration that correlates directly with the junction redesign timing
If TfL’s manipulated figures still show a 7.4% increase in journey times going out of Putney, the real-world impact on commuters is likely to be substantially worse.
The broader context
The Putney Bridge junction redesign was implemented as part of TfL’s transport strategy, with officials claiming it would improve traffic flow and safety. However, the scheme has faced criticism from local residents and businesses who reported immediate increases in congestion.
The FOI request specifically sought operational data comparing six-month periods before and after implementation, covering 13 bus routes: 14, 22, 39, 74, 85, 93, 220, 265, 270, 378, 424, 430 and 485.
The discovery of systematic statistical manipulation raises serious questions about TfL’s accountability and transparency. If transport authorities are willing to engage in such extensive data gaming to hide the impact of infrastructure changes, what other performance metrics might be similarly unreliable?
For Putney residents, the message is clear: despite TfL’s claims of running more buses faster, the junction redesign has measurably worsened public transport – and the authorities have been actively working to hide this fact.
This is a developing story. Additional traffic data analysis will be published soon.
Data Sources: Transport for London FOI Request Response, Wandsworth Council, passenger complaints data
Analysis Period: Six months before and after junction redesign implementation
Routes Analyzed: London bus routes 14, 22, 39 (full dataset covers routes 14, 22, 39, 74, 85, 93, 220, 265, 270, 378, 424, 430, 485)
