Route 15

Route 15
2 January 2006

The 15 is a particularly “touristy” route passing as it does several major attractions as it runs from one end of central London to the other. Not least the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, the 15 being the only route to serve these places apart from three more city-oriented routes, but not forgetting Oxford Street, St. Paul’s, Trafalgar Square and so on.

Whilst the Mayor has been pursuing a policy of replacing Routemasters with modern low floor buses, he also made numerous references to intentions to keep a few on a "heritage tourist route." The 15 seemed to be the ideal candidate, so not a few eyebrows were raised when the route's conversion to one-person operation was announced. This also came as a particular disappointment to enthusiasts, as the 15 was host to quite a number of "unusual" Routemasters, and all were immaculately presented.

OPO conversion allowed the route’s transfer to Bow garage, freeing up additional space at Upton Park for other routes previously run from Bow. As usual, Stagecoach ordered new Tridents for the 15, and here is 17782 (LX03 BVU) at the stand in Eastbourne Terrace, Paddington, on Friday 18 February 2005, with a line-up of other buses. Immediately behind is another Stagecoach 15; note the difference in livery, as the rear bus has the swirls which had to be discontinued to meet the latest TfL requirements. Also in shot are a Metroline President on route 205 and a Citaro artic on route 436.

Photo © John Bennett.

These days the 15 runs between Paddington and Blackwall Station. The latter is not much of a traffic objective, but terminating here means buses on route 15 can miss the severe congestion in the Canning Town area where the A13 crosses the Lee Valley.

The 15 has had a long association with route 23, although the 23 disappeared for a while. As well as running east to East Ham, and on to Dagenham via the Barking By-Pass, buses also ran west as far as Acton. The former is now covered by route 115 during the day, and the latter by routes 7 and 23.

So what happened about the heritage routes? After much ado two routes were eventually announced, initially as 'A' and 'B' although it was not intended that these would be their final numbers. Both routes are effectively short workings on existing routes, to avoid any potential complications in the future: from 2017 all services will have to be operated by Disability Discrimination Act compliant vehicles, or else alternatives must exist to make the same journey by exactly the same means, and the Mayor/TfL have decided to bring this deadline forward to 2006 for their own services (with a handful of exceptions!).

One of the two routes, awarded to Stagecoach, was for services between Trafalgar Square and Tower Hill, covering the most “touristy” section of the 15 taking in the Tower, Monument, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Trafalgar Square. Although an extension to the Oxford Street area might have been expected, this road was explicitly excluded from any proposals from the outset due to the severe congestion already experienced. In the end it was decided that the number of the parallel route 15 should be adopted for the Routemasters, and certainly this looks more natural than 'B' or one of the higher vacant numbers, although there is some potential for confusion with the main 15.

Ten buses were allocated to each operator; 5 buses are needed for the daily turnout, plus 3 operational spares and two vehicles as a “strategic reserve.” Despite having only a couple of weeks to get the vehicles ready after they came off frontline service, Stagecoach put in a commendable effort and managed to turn out 5 immaculately presented RMs for the first day launch, the first journey being driven by none less than Peter Hendy, managing director of TfL surface transport.

Here RM1933 is seen having just finished a westbound journey at Trafalgar Square – this was the launch vehicle. Buses have to run round the block out of service to turn round; on both routes this takes them past some stops that could usefully be served, but which are off the main route and therefore cannot be, as to do so would create journey opportunities only available by non-wheelchair accessible vehicles!

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Chronologically 263 614

Numerically 13 16
See also routes N15, 25, 115, 147, 330, 7, 23

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