It's time to extend the Superloop, on this occasion with a rail replacement bus. Welcome to the Bakerloop, an express route shadowing the unbuilt Bakerloo line extension. brown double deckers between Waterloo and Lewisham, essentially only stopping at places with a Bakerloo line station or where a Bakerloo line station might be. The route'll be numbered BL1 and should be introduced in the autumn, subject to a consultation which launched yesterday. Last April Sadiq announced he'd introduce the Bakerloop if he was re-elected Mayor (which he was, so he is). Way back in 2019 he launched a consultation for a proper Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham, seeking views on stations, worksites and tunnel alignment. This followed a previous consultation in 2017 asking where the stations and ventilation shafts should go, and that followed an initial consultation launched by Boris in 2014 asking what route the proposed extension should take. Alas ten years later the extension remains fundamentally unfunded so we're getting a bus instead, possibly as a long-term temporary measure, probably as a replacement. Waterloo → Elephant & Castle → Burgess Park → Old Kent Road → New Cross Gate → Lewisham lots in Lewisham, some near the station and some near the shops, assuming this is what's eventually agreed. Whoever designs the route diagrams on the side of Superloop buses should stop being so literal about including every single stop because this is not a helpful way to depict the route. Burgess Park gap, in the absence of the tram Ken Livingstone wanted to send here but Boris cancelled. Instead of being red and white the buses will be brown and white, so a striking presence on the street, plus they'll have the same moquette as Bakerloo line trains because everyone loves a seating gimmick. There is essentially no downside, other than that it's a bus route rather than a tube train capable of reaching Lewisham in minutes. expanding the Superloop network further. Sadiq teased this as part of his re-election campaign last year suggesting ten more routes might be introduced. The Bakerloop is one of these and we now have tantalising details about two more. SL11: North Greenwich → Woolwich → Thamesmead → Abbey Wood 472. It will in fact replace route 472 but only stop in select locations, with other routes picking up the slack at unserved stops inbetween. The 180 can mop up everything west of Plumstead. I think this souped-up 472 is intended to be the bus transit scheme the government agreed to fund in the 2023 Autumn Statement, in which case that'll help pay for improved highway infrastructure. It's not yet clear how many stops there'll need to be on the circuitous loop round Thamesmead, but expect all to become clearer when a proper consultation is launched later in the year. SL12: Gants Hill → Romford → Elm Park → Rainham 66, which from experience is already pretty speedy as it hurtles along the A12. The eastern end will be a very welcome north-south link in a borough whose railways run west-east and where existing bus routes have a tendency to meander rather than run direct, so this half looks like a winner. Again a proper consultation will follow. I see we've abandoned all pretence that Superloop routes are numbered in a logical way. The first ten were supposedly numbered clockwise starting in the north, whereas these two are numbered anti-clockwise starting in the east. BL1 not before the autumn. But look out for the brown bus rumbling down the Old Kent Road because there's no expectation a brown train will ever rumble underneath.

For twenty-two consecutive Februaries on diamond geezer I've kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a stats-tastic 28-day feature called The Count. You therefore won't be surprised to hear that I intend to do exactly the same again this year, indeed you'd be more surprised if I didn't. Expect to read a post of comparisons and contrasts at the end of the month. I kicked off this annual exercise back in 2003 which means I already have over two decades of thrilling historical data to analyse and this'll be a 23rd datapoint. Here's my selected list of ten countables for February 2025. Count 1: Number of visits to this blog (Feb 2024 total: 93789) Count 2: Number of comments on this blog (Feb 2024 total: 861) Count 3: Number of words I write on this blog (Feb 2024 total: 38040) Count 4: Number of hours I spend out of the house (Feb 2024 total: 150) Count 5: Number of nights I go out and am vaguely sociable (Feb 2024 total: 3) Count 6: Number of bottles of lager I drink (Feb 2024 total: 0) Count 7: Number of cups of tea I drink (Feb 2024 total: 123) Count 8: Number of trains I travel on (Feb 2024 total: 265) Count 9: Number of steps I walk (Feb 2024 total: 452000) Count 10: The Mystery Count (Feb 2024 total: 0) (again) Error Count: (Jan 2025 total: 33) I can't promise February will be better but I won't be counting because once you know I'm counting you might get deliberately pernickety. Also if you are going to point out an error please try not to phrase it as a question ("don't you mean Andersen?"), don't be patronising ("I really enjoyed this but...") and never risk a surely, thanks.

31 unblogged things I did in January Wed 1: I spent New Year at home for a change watching the cheesy fireworks on TV. I can confirm that Big Ben bonged 15 seconds late on my television, such is digital delay, so millions of people celebrated the arrival of 2025 belatedly. Thu 2: When in Croxley I like to walk past our old house to see what's changed, and the bathroom window's new and I hate their gold door number and we never kept the bins out the front and blimey the silver birch in the back garden is massive now. Fri 3: Creme Eggs are 85p this year and a box of five costs £3.50. Ten years ago, when they downsized a box from six eggs to five, the prices were 60p and £2.85. Sat 4: Three things I failed to tell you about Lancing: a) The Wash & Go launderette is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, b) Joe Pannell won the byelection in Widewater ward for the Conservatives c) The upper streets in North Lancing are only served by a bus on Tuesdays and Fridays, once in each direction. Sun 5: My flat never suffers from condensation, except it did this morning when all the windows unexpectedly steamed up. I realised it wasn't something I'd done when I saw condensation on multiple other windows along Bow Road and also on glass panels at Stratford station - a highly unusual reaction to an exceptionally rapid rise in temperature as a warm front passed over. Mon 6: Here's a stupid sign in North Greenwich beside the new footbridge near the entrance to the Silvertown Tunnel. I think I know what they're trying to say, but what is a bicycle if not a mobility aid? Tue 7: Matt Somerville's animated tube and bus maps have been taken offline after TfL's branding team suddenly got unduly heavyhanded after 15 years and forced his hosting provider to take them down. Widespread outrage will eventually lead to TfL apologising for the way that their “online brand protection agency” handled the affair and all the maps will go back up again, hurrah. Wed 8: Today I am 60 days away from being 60, and sometimes I wish I wasn't the kind of person who noticed this kind of thing. Thu 9: Thank you for your 76 suggestions for London squares I could visit this year. I've already blogged about a few of them but have made a list of the others for future perusal. We have Helena to thanks for my recent trip to Mortgramit Square, for example, thanks! Fri 10: Daffodils are back at the supermarket again. In good news a bunch still costs £1. In bad news a bunch only contains 8 stalks this year, whereas it used to be at least a dozen. In good news this bunch'll stay in bloom for over two weeks whereas they normally start fading after one. Sat 11: Had lemon curd on my toast today for the first time in years, and I think I should probably have it a lot more often. Sun 12: While on walkabout in Stamford Hill I noticed that pretty much all the girls were wearing identical shiny black jackets with a fluffy-edged hood, and I wondered if that was a Hasidic Jewish community thing, ditto the identical pink scooters a heck of a lot of them were riding. Mon 13: An email arrived, can we use your photograph of Crich Tram Museum in our upcoming publication of the Heritage Shell Guide for Derbyshire? Obviously I said yes, how excellent to continue in the footsteps of Betjeman and Piper, so I'm going to be page 134. The new Yorkshire volumes look gorgeous. Tue 14: My Rail Sale purchases totalled £50.30 and for that I will be making three exciting journeys, one to the Sussex coast (already blogged), one to two farflung towns I've never been to (in February) and one to a farflung town I've only ever seen from a train (in March). It'd better not rain. Wed 15: I used to have four uncles and today the last of them passed away, not unexpectedly. I'm glad we saw him before the decline and I'm glad he got his celebratory card from the queen and I'm glad to still have two aunties, but it feels like a generational shift. Thu 16: I should not have worn that shirt in public, I thought I'd thrown it away. Fri 17: An online whipround facility called Collection Pot is advertising on tube escalators. I guess these days it is quite difficult for work colleagues to chip in actual banknotes when someone leaves, but I wouldn't describe a 1.9% commission fee + 20p per contribution as "as close to free as possible". Sat 18: Why go to a theme park when you can ride up the escalator at St John's Wood station into an increasingly ferocious downdraught, then battle the gale across the ticket hall. If you've never experienced it on a cold day the buffeting windchill is astonishing. Sun 19: This attractive ramped staircase is the main entrance to Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College, and I nearly included it in my post 'Five things I noticed this weekend' but I didn't think it merited 100 words. Still gorgeous though. Mon 20: Trump's inauguration ran late so he wasn't quite sworn in by noon which means his Presidency is going to be two minutes short of four years long. It was the only upside I could find, sorry (and that's assuming we all survive until 2029). Tue 21: You can see Wandsworth Road station from the end of the platform at Clapham High Street, and one day I will write a post called Stations You Can See From The Previous Station. Wed 22: Ooh, the standing charge on my electricity bill was reduced on 1st January. Oh, it's only gone down from 44.000p per day to 43.997p per day, a saving of 1p per year. I feel like they're basically taking the piss. Thu 23: All four escalators at Cutty Sark DLR continue to be out of action following a long-term maintenance fiasco, so entry is now round the corner from M&S and down the emergency stairs, which aren't the stairs I always thought were the emergency stairs. Avoid avoid avoid. Fri 24: The Traitors final peaked fizzingly early with the loss of non-Welsh Charlotte, after which all the tension was lost because we already knew which side was going to win, and I suspect the producers were very disappointed that their Seer fiddling ended in a damp squib. Sat 25: I finally got round to visiting the A2021 in Eastbourne, confirming it really wasn't worth blogging about, unlike the A2022, A2023, B2024 and A2025. Sun 26: It's unnerving seeing a walkthrough video of the house of a departed relative on an estate agent's website. I'm remembering all the happy times spent there, and they're thinking detached extended no onward chain. Mon 27: Some ad-infested digital channel is repeating 90s TV soap Eldorado, so I watched the first two episodes again and remembered how miserably plotless the series had been. No wonder it didn't last a year, there were no characters to care about. Tue 28: The Orbit in the Olympic Park is reopening under new management on Valentine's Day and a trip to the observation deck is only £7 according to their website. That's cheaper than I've gone up before, I thought. Then I read the smallprint and there's a £5 booking fee (five pounds! for what exactly?) so I won't be doing that again. To slide down will cost you £19 (i.e. £14+£5). Wed 29: My last three were East Dulwich, South Bermondsey and Queens Road Peckham. Thu 30: This morning I walked across what may one day be Heathrow's third runway but is currently part of the village of Harmondsworth. The thundering alignment potentially crosses Hatch Lane between Candover Close and the end of the farm track, 1035m north of the existing runway, with a row of semis to one side and a deliberately empty field on the other. Everything south of The Crown pub gets wiped away while the village green and historic buildings survive. Enjoy the birdsong while you can, which may be five years or may of course be forever. Fri 31: Today I'm finishing off my last mince pie, bought from the reduced shelf after Christmas. Admittedly the best before date was 11 January and it is indeed past its best, but it's only eight months before I can stock up again. Finally, let's see how my annual counts are going... Number of London boroughs visited: all 33 (at least twice each) Number of London bus routes ridden: 110 (20%) Number of Z1-3 stations used: all 350-odd (100%) Number of Z4-6 stations used: 0

London's next dead bus 118: Morden to Brixton Location: south London Length of journey: 9 miles, 55 minutes 118. for decades. The 45 by contrast has been repeatedly beheaded over the years, most recently a significant chop in 2019 lopping off the northern end from King's Cross to Elephant and Castle. Its route is now just five miles long and follows several overbussed roads, hence it's become a prime candidate for extinguishment. The plan is thus to tack the 45's only useful section (Brixton to Camberwell) onto the northern end of route 118, starting on Saturday. And because the public tend to complain more when lower-numbered routes are withdrawn they've decided to call the extended route 45 instead of 118. Here's a useful graphic I've knocked up from diagrams in the consultation. withdrew it anyway but having renumbered route 82 as route 13, and everyone thought that was great. More recently in 2023 they binned the 16, a route with a century-long heritage, but got away with it by renumbering the 332 as the 16. Now the 45 goes the same way, which means TfL have successfully managed to kill the 13, 16 and 45 by pretending they've killed the 82, 332 and 118. 59, which has been drafted in to cover the 45's southern dogleg to Clapham Park. The 59 is no stranger to Slight Terminus Tweaking having been diverted at its northern end in 2023 to cover for the withdrawal of route 521. Now its southern end also gets to endure STT, but only for three stops so it's relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and existing 59 passengers won't be generally inconvenienced. There is of course a map to help explain the changes which has been posted up at all affected bus stops. It's from TfL's Let's Make This Bus Map Unnecessarily Complicated department and I'd like to imagine the conversation which led to its rollout. Boss: We've made this map to show the upcoming bus changes which I'd like you to post up everywhere. Minion: It's not a very good map though is it? Boss: It's an excellent map, it contains all possible necessary information. Minion: But it's so complicated. Boss: It is LMTBMUC policy to differentiate between withdrawn, extended and unchanged sections of all individual routes. Minion: But it shows both the before and the after and uses three different kinds of line in several different colours. Boss: Yes, we always do this, whether it's helpful or not. Minion: Also you've only shown the central section of the changes between Streatham and Camberwell. Boss: Yes, we only ever make one map and then we stick it up everywhere. Minion: It's going to confuse the hell out of passengers. Boss: It ticks all relevant policy boxes. Minion: In particular it's going to baffle passengers at the 35 bus stops south of Streatham on existing route 118. Boss: All the information they need is plainly displayed in a tiny box at the bottom of the map. Minion: I've made a better poster for these people, look. Boss: We can't possibly use that poster, it does not contain all possible necessary information. Minion: But it's all the information these people need... use the 45 instead. Boss: We cannot afford to make two posters, we only ever make one and use it everywhere. Minion: It's still not a very good map though is it? Boss: Please go and post it up everywhere, there's a good chap. I have of course been for a ride on London's next dead bus, even though it isn't actually being withdrawn only renumbered. Starting in Morden. Now for the grand tour of Mitcham. First we pass the fire station and the tram stop, then the abandoned White Hart and the charred timbers of the Burn Bullock. Beyond the cricket green we thread slowly round the gyratory between Lidl and Iceland, past the extraordinary four-armed clocktower that looks like a character from Beauty and the Beast. It's worth saying that if you really wanted to go to Streatham you'd catch the 201 which runs direct rather than take a deviating dawdle on the 118, so that map posted up at all the bus stops here is properly unnecessary. It's taken over 30 minutes to reach Streatham Common station and we still haven't reached the section of route depicted on TfL's bus changes map. The common itself is two stops away. Here we join Streatham High Road, allegedly Europe's longest high street and still brimming with retail opportunity. Here too we join an entire fleet of buses heading north, this being one of TfL's busiest double decker arteries, and by the time we reach St Leonard's we are but one of six routes heading Brixton-wards. That said only one route passes all three of Streatham stations and that's the 118, thus of course next week the 45. Next week the ex-118, now the 45, will continue to Camberwell so I then did that too. A slow crawl towards the police station, then back under the railway onto Coldharbour Lane. It says a lot about passenger demand that TfL chose to keep three buses on this busy corridor - conveniently the 35, 45 and 345 - rather than simply binning the 45 outright. Coldharbour Lane has a typical Lambeth mix of dense Victorian buildings, grey flats and multiple barber shops, plus a call at Loughborough Junction for those who prefer a train. I alighted at the new final stop at Camberwell Green, and thus ironically the only section of route 45 I didn't ride is the one section that's being truly withdrawn. Because London's next dead bus is the 45, not the 118, whatever the inadequate publicity might claim.

You know what TfL's We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department is getting rid of now? Previously the timetable poster at Mile End station would have included details of the first and last trains from the station, information which can be very important if you're travelling late or early, but now they don't. Instead the new posters urge you to go away and look up the first and last trains online. The top suggestion is to download the TfL Go app and look there, and the second suggestion is to go to tfl/gov.uk/timetables. If you use the QR code it takes you to tfl/gov.uk/timetables, so that's essentially the same as the second option. But if you don't have an enabled device the times of first and last trains have effectively disappeared. This is a poster from the southbound Northern line platform at Bank station. Trains start around 6am and run until 0038, it says, except on Sundays when nothing turns up before 7.30am or runs after midnight. Potentially very useful stuff, particularly if you're now thinking "what seriously, they start that late on Sundays?" To be fair this is the current timetable poster at Bank station installed in 2021, they haven't yet replaced it with a less detailed version. But that's the direction of travel. What you get is how long it takes to travel to the other stations on the line and the fact trains run every 2-6 minutes. But that's now all you get, not the fact that trains run from 0518 to 0106. My hunch is that TfL no longer want to print a new poster every time they launch a new timetable, which isn't very often but in their view every scrimped penny counts. One of these sentences is correct - please let me know which a) What's more if you launch the TfL Go app it doesn't tell you when the first and last trains are either, only what time the next trains are due and how to plan a journey. b) If you launch the TfL Go app you have to dig a bit to find the first and last trains, but at least they're all there. c) Thankfully the TfL Go app displays first and last trains almost instantly. tfl/gov.uk/timetables, a top-level index page, rather than one level down to the specific Jubilee line page tfl.gov.uk/tube/timetable/jubilee. It's a QR code guys, it can link anywhere, and you know anyone scanning it is on the Jubilee line platforms at West Ham because this is a West Ham/Jubilee-specific poster. tfl.gov.uk/modes/tube/first-and-last-tube. It's excellent, it has actual pdf timetables for every tube line showing the first few and last few trains, and what's more it was updated as recently as 13th January. A QR code which linked directly to that would be a lot more useful than a QR code linking to an index of umpteen different lines, and beneath that atomised hourly departures. But as of a fortnight ago, according to a user on Reddit, even Chorleywood has been switched over to the new style QR-code-only design. That is a proper abdication of responsibility, even down to the wording that says "For Chiltern Railways times, visit chilternrailways.co.uk". See photo here. n.b. I haven't been out to Chorleywood to check, or to any similar stations, so if you're passing through any of the following today please leave a comment and let us know. Still has actual timetable posterSwitched to timetable-less posterNot sure  ChorleywoodAmersham, Chesham, Chalfont & Latimer, Rickmansworth, Watford, Croxley Roding Valley, Chigwell, Grange Hill Amersham and Watford branches of the Metropolitan line with every departure clearly listed. These days they're only available as pdfs online, the printed versions having ceased in 2016 to save money, but they explicitly show all the details the new posters lack. Heaven knows why TfL can't print a poster of the Croxley-related info and post it up at Croxley station, it's hardly rocket science, indeed I'd suggest it's a false economy. Interestingly Overground platforms all still have full timetables showing every departure, now shaded using the colour of the line. I suspect this is because National Rail stations follow different rules so TfL can't ditch them. But it is a tad odd that even part-time Windrush station Battersea Park has a bespoke timetable poster to show its occasional services, whereas posters at Oxford Circus won't even tell you when the last train goes. We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department is increasingly in the driving seat these days, claiming all the information passengers need is available on the TfL Go app or online. But it's often not easily found, or only discoverable by trying to plan a journey, or sometimes no longer available even there. There's also an assumption that everyone has a smartphone, which obviously they don't, and that the TfL Go is a brilliant travel companion, which alas it isn't yet. We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department has no intention of making things easier for you any time soon.