Tuesday, July 29, 2008

New Nightbuses...

I was in Norwich today visiting a customer and thought I'd take a different route home from Liverpool Street this evening.

I walked down some back streets and picked up a 15 bus from Aldgate.

When I alighted on Commercial Road, I noticed that the bus stop was reporting a bus route I hadn't heard of before, the N550.

For those who don't live in London, the "N" is important: it implies a night bus and is therefore a useful backup if you stay out too late to get the tube and can't (or won't, in my case) get a cab.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I walked down Butcher Row and noticed a bus stop advertising a second night bus, the N551!

Two new routes in one day?  What gives?

There was nothing obvious on TfL's website but I did find something in Google. It appears that the N50 (an unreliable but useful) service is being split into the two routes above and that, wonder of wonders, one of them (the N551) will travel down the Highway, meaning it will stop outside the flat. Hurrah!

Click here and search forward for "New night route"

4 comments:

enemyradar said...

Oy my god! Excellent!

Richard Brown said...

Thought you'd be pleased :-)

enemyradar said...

So pleased, I went a bit Jewish.

However, are there any stops in the middle section of The Highway? As I recall, buses spend very little time travelling along that bit, most crossing it - the D3 goes down Glamis Road into Wapping proper, the 100 comes in at Vaughan Way and then spends a tiny amount of time on THwy coming out of Wapping Lane and then into Dellow St, as does the ELW.

But there might be a stop around there. Or TfL has thought of this (Ha!).

Richard Brown said...

Good question....

Annoyingly, TfL don't publish route maps for individual buses so I thought I'd get the "local area" map for Shadwell.

It still shows the N50.

Grrrr..... Looks like not everything is updated yet.