The B14 seems to be London's least reliable bus service. Passengers
often don't know whether the bus that turns up is 5 minutes early or 25
minutes late!

Every time there's a change of operator, the service gets worse. When
Crystals originally got the route, the passengers groaned (as Crystals
had once operated the precursor route unreliably) but it got worse when
TGM took it over, and even worse when they lost it!

It's not just changing the operating company that decreases reliability.
When the route was extended to Orpington, it got substantially busier,
but even less reliable (despite the greatly increased recovery time).
AIUI This was partly due to sharing a lot of the route with the R11
which runs every 20 minutes. It was announced in the News Shopper that
the B14 service was going to be increased to 3bph, but that was about 3
years ago and nothing's come of it yet!

And now they want to make the service less convenient. Kimberley Drive
(Sidcup) is a long steep hill that many of the local old people (of
which there are many) can no longer climb. Therefore they rely on the
bus to get to Albany Park station or to the doctor's surgery. The B14 in
that area is on a loop, with part of Bexley Lane used twice - presumably
because of difficulty turning right onto it from Longmead Drive.
However, now the operators don't want to turn left onto it from Longmead
Drive either. It has been announced that they intend to make the B14 go
down Kimberley Drive on both northbound and southbound journeys,
depriving pensioners of the only sensible way to get to the top of the
hill!

Are they trying to run this route down?

--
Aidan Stanger
http://www.bettercrossrail.co.uk