Seven Putney bus routes now run on electricity. The milestone passed without a press release from TfL, without a ceremony, and without much credit to the people who spent 15 years making it happen.
Route 22 completed its conversion to electric operation late last month, bringing the total number of Putney bus routes running zero-emission vehicles to seven: the 22, 39, 93, 265, 270, 337 and 485.
The route 22 now runs Wright StreetDeck Electroliner electric double-deckers, operated by Go-Ahead London from its Putney garage. The first vehicles arrived from 6 February 2026, with full conversion completed by 17 February.
Fifteen years of pushing
The story behind those seven routes begins in 2011, when the Putney Society installed NO2 monitoring tubes across central Putney and found that 67% of the nitrogen dioxide pollution was coming from buses. They began campaigning for hybrid buses.
Within a year, the first hybrids arrived. Pollution fell by around 20%. It was still three times the UK legal limit.
The monitoring continued through the mid-2010s, and in 2016 the picture became impossible to ignore: Putney High Street was named the most polluted high street in the UK, with NO2 levels around 125 µg/m³. Analysis by King’s College confirmed that more than 60% of the pollution was coming from diesel buses.
Sadiq Khan launched his mayoral campaign on Putney High Street that year, pledging to reduce pollution. In 2017, his administration introduced a new fleet of hybrid buses across many of the High Street routes. Pollution fell by a further 40%.
But progress then stalled. Between 2017 and 2022, levels barely moved. The Society began pressing for the next step: pure electric buses, specifically to replace what it described as “the elderly pure diesel buses on the 93 route.”
TfL was resistant. In a formal request, the Society urged TfL to prioritise the High Street’s most polluted routes when rolling out electric vehicles ahead of 2030. TfL declined. But as bus contracts came up for renewal, electrification came anyway. In 2023, the 93 converted.
“TfL resisted that, but we did achieve our most immediate objective, of replacing the old pure diesel buses on the 93 route – which had a considerable beneficial impact, in fact even larger than we had expected,” said one of the Putney Society’s key members, Mike Fawcett.
The 93 was followed, through 2023, by the 39, 265 and 337. For the first time, air pollution levels on Putney High Street dropped below the UK legal limit. We reported on those improvements in May 2024, alongside a broader assessment of what ULEZ had and had not achieved. The electric buses were the dominant factor. The 270 and 485 have since followed, and now, with the 22, the total stands at seven.
Pollution levels on Putney High Street are now around 75% lower than they were in 2012. The Society’s own monitoring, running continuously since July 2022 across eight sites, shows NO2 still on a downward trend.
Still not finished
That progress has a limit. At around 25 µg/m³, NO2 levels remain well above the World Health Organisation’s recommended maximum. At all seven monitoring sites, readings are still between two and four times the WHO limit. Below the law, not below safe.
A Freedom of Information request to TfL in late 2025 gave an honest picture of what comes next. As of December 2025, TfL confirmed that route 22 would receive its electric buses “during 2026”, a forecast that proved accurate within weeks. But TfL also confirmed there are “no current plans” for routes 14, 74 or 430 to follow.
Progress has happened as contracts come up for renewal, not against a published roadmap. The pace is steady but not predictable, and further conversions will be announced when they happen, if they are announced at all.
Of the 8,797 buses in the London fleet as of March 2025, 1,951 (roughly one in five) run on electricity. Go-Ahead, which operates the Putney routes, had 584 zero-emission vehicles at that date.
Fifteen years of campaigning, seven routes, a 75% reduction. The job is not yet done.
The job is indeed not yet done: the more difficult job is ahead, to reduce the level of car traffic emissions.