Putney’s buses are so slow the BBC came to film them

London’s buses are the slowest in England, averaging 7.1mph. Putney’s are worse. Route 14, which runs through the heart of the area, averages 5.7mph.

This week, a BBC News crew came to Putney High Street, boarded the 14 at the Green Man, and got off before it reached the end of the high street because it was moving too slowly to bother with. Putney residents will be familiar.

The Confederation of Passenger Transport published a 60-page analysis the same day setting out what fixing this would take and what it is worth. A 10% improvement in London bus speeds would free up £283.9m a year: £214.4m in operating cost savings and £69.5m in additional revenue. Every 1mph gained reduces operating costs by around 7.5%. The three measures that would deliver the improvement are bus lanes, traffic signal priority, and roadworks coordination. TfL told the BBC it is revamping traffic light sequences across London.

The local picture

Route 14’s 5.7mph is not a snapshot. In 2020, when the roads were clear, it averaged 6.9mph. It has slowed by 17% over five years. And the problem is not general London congestion: TfL’s own Excess Waiting Time data shows routes 22 and 265 along Lower Richmond Road running 55% above TfL’s own target of one minute. Those same routes perform among the best in the borough after midnight, when junction traffic falls. The junction is not a contributing factor to Putney’s bus problem. It is the cause.

Paul Lynch, Managing Director of Stagecoach London, told the London Assembly Transport Committee in December that “endless traffic is driving passengers away” and that conditions were the worst in 40 years. Three of the five most complained-about bus routes in the entire TfL network serve Putney.

Where the fixes have worked

The CPT report documents three places that have already delivered the kind of improvement London needs.

Oxford introduced bus gates and coordinated traffic signals alongside free Park and Ride: patronage grew 12%, journey times fell 5.5%, and nine fewer buses were needed to run the same service.

Portsmouth applied priority measures across the city centre: journey times fell 31% and patronage grew 41% over two years. Aberdeen introduced bus gates with signal coordination: patronage grew 12.7% and journey times fell 17 to 18%.

All three involved traffic signal priority as a key part of the changes. All three required coordinated action between the local authority and the bus operator.

Putney’s junction already has traffic signals. In our case, the signal timing at the Putney Bridge junction that is causing the increase in congestion, has been a sticking point. The council maintains that the timing agreed was not what was implemented, and the result was months of traffic chaos.

There has yet to be a clear explanation for why the signaling was different to what was agreed and why it was changed: could it be that TfL surreptitiously introduced priority programming for buses? We are still to find out, a year later.

We do know that despite being a brand new junction that TfL did not introduce the latest version of its signaling technology which adapts on the fly to actual traffic patterns. We also know that it did not add cameras that can see bicycles and adjust timing accordingly, relying instead on older, dumber technology that tells whether a car is above it by recording the presence of metal.

The result has been a huge amount of green time wasted giving bicycles that aren’t even there priority over everything else.

But back to the BBC segment on Putney’s die bus speeds. One resident put it plainly: “Quicker to jog, surprise surprise.”

What comes next

Putney.news put specific questions to TfL about whether the traffic light revamp covers the Putney Bridge junction and when any improvement in bus journey times is expected. TfL acknowledged the questions but had not provided answers at the time of publication. We will update this story when it does.

The BBC did not come to Putney by accident. They chose this junction, this bus, to illustrate a national story about slow buses. That choice is its own data point in a series that has been building since 2024.

Residents can submit feedback on bus performance directly to TfL at tfl.gov.uk/help-and-contact. London TravelWatch, the independent passenger watchdog, handles systemic complaints: londontravelwatch.org.uk. Putney’s MP Fleur Anderson has previously raised Putney transport issues in parliament and can be contacted at fleur.anderson.mp@parliament.uk. Ward councillors’ contact details are at wandsworth.gov.uk/councillors.