London Banter - Boxing Day bus services in London

"PaintDryCam" wrote in message
...
Just been looking at the Boxing Day bus map on http://www.busmap.org/
(downloads). There seems to be a very comprehensive service this year,
with
just three significant areas of Greater London not served -
Harefield/North
Ruislip, an area east of Romford, and Downe. Harefield/North Ruislip and
Downe
are sparsely populated areas, but why is such a large percentage of the
Borough
of Havering also unserved? Much of the area is quite densely populated. Is
Havering Council not paying as much to TfL as the other boroughs?

I doubt that's it, despite the fact that the council's always complaining
about getting lses money from the government than anywhere of comparable
size. (I have no idea what the stats are, so that could be true, or complete
rubbish). But I'd think the main reason is that there are no routes that
cover decent segments of that area - at least three more routes would be
needed to get it all included I think. The thing about Havering's bus
network is that only a couple of feeder routes avoid Romford, so it's quite
tough finding routes that run "orbitally" to it. And no routes cover a
decent section of the area skipped by the Boxing Day services (basically
Emerson Park and Harold Wood) and link them to Romford, as it doesn't
include a major towncentre. So it's probably completely uneconomical to run
anything there.

Jonn