London bus gripe: Destination changes

I'm currently volunteering two days a week at City and Hackney Mind, and therefore take the 48 bus from Walthamstow to Hackney Central to get there.

Coming back from volunteering on Tuesday, a rather irritating thing happened. The bus, which had "Walthamstow Central" on the front, was going down the Lower Clapton Road when it was announced that the bus would be changing destination.

No reason was given, nor were we told the revised destination. For all the passengers knew, the bus might have been diverted to Tottenham or Timbuktu (via the Bermuda Triangle in the latter case).

The bus kept to its route until we stopped at Leyton, Bakers' Arms, which, for those unaware of the geography of East London, is roughly the boundary between Walthamstow and Leyton, about fifteen minutes walk from my house.

It was then announced that the bus would be terminating here, and, along with everyone else aside from two girls chatting on the upper deck, I disembarked.

It was no problem for me to walk from Bakers' Arms to my house, but it would have been a different matter for someone who needed to get to Walthamstow Central, or who was infirm. These people would have had to wait for a second bus and pay an extra £1.20. For some Londoners, an extra £1.20 on bus fares means less money for food.

I cannot see any mention of buses with revised destinations under the Refunds section of the Transport for London website. Perhaps making a complaint would help.

Commenting on Clapton Pond Blog, ewebber says:

"I sometimes get the 48 from the centre of the universe to London Bridge to get to work when I can't take my scooter out. It's a long journey, but means I can get on the bus, sit down and switch off until an hour later. So often they change the destination half way and kick me out at the overcrowded Liverpool Street to fight my way onto another bus. I always ask for a transfer ticket, but it tends to make me late for work and is just generally pretty annoying.

"The reasons given is the traffic and bunching of buses, so because of traffic and bad planning those of us that get on the bus nice and early on the route (where tubes aren't an option) suffer. I'm generally pro-buses, but this really puts me off, this and the new air conditioning units on the upper deck that are way too loud. Rant over!"

Now that the new bus for London has been unveiled, perhaps we could see some improvement on bus route planning.

While London's bus service is much better than the deregulated bus services outside of the capital (one of which I am using this weekend) there is room for improvement.