Route 507

Route 507
1 October 2005

Red Arrow routes 507 and 521 were the first routes to be converted to the now common Mercedes Benz Citaro G "bendy buses," from Wednesday 5 June 2002. This is an unusual day of the week for a new operation to start, but came about because it was the Queen’s Golden Jubilee weekend, with the Spring Bank holiday delayed by a week to 3 June and an extra bank Holiday on 4 June. As the Red Arrows do not run at weekends or public holidays, 5 June became the first day.

This route is quite short (3 km) compared to many of London’s other bendy bus routes, for example route 12 at 12 km, 453 (also 12 km) and 73 (13 km). Both the 507 and the 521 terminate at Waterloo, with the 507 terminating and standing in the taxi road shared with the route 211 (Stop C), most convenient for commuters arriving at and departing from Waterloo, the main target market of the Red Arrows. The other end of the route is Victoria, so there is plenty of demand from both ends of the route to offices in the Horseferry Road area, long associated with the Civil Service.

Both routes are still marketed as Red Arrow, although less prominently than in the past, and operated by London General, a member of the large Go-Ahead group, from a dedicated depot in Waterloo, coded RA for Red Arrow. Regular operations at weekends would not be allowed even if they were wanted, as there are restrictions on noise nuisance to neighbouring residential properties. This route’s PVR is 9 vehicles. Buses run weekdays 0630 to 2038, and the average journey time is about 15 minutes.

The nature of this route, a commuter route, made it a good option to test the bendy buses, as it is a low-used service outside the peaks, and TfL did not run the risk of using a trunk route and running into major problems – as happened with some later conversions such as the changeover on route 25 from Trident to Bendy bus, where the first day was a disaster with reports of buses running in fives.

The route from Waterloo to Victoria runs from Waterloo station, past the Eurostar taxi entrance, left in York road, then along past the Eurostar terminal, then past St Thomas’ Hospital and along Lambeth Place Road. The route then crosses Lambeth Bridge to reach Horseferry Road, past the Channel 4 building and into Victoria Street to Terminus Place, Stop B. It is the only route to serve Horseferry Road, which most unusually means that road is only served by buses on Monday to Friday, but as it is mainly offices this is not really a problem. On the return journey the bus runs the length of the cab road to reach Waterloo, where MAL 30 (BX02 YZS) was seen.

Photo © Jordan Young.

The original Red Arrow route, from 18 April 1966, was the 500, which ran from Victoria to Marble Arch, extended during shopping hours to Oxford Circus in a loop via Brook Street and Oxford Street. It was operated from Victoria garage using XMSs.

This must have been a success as 7 further routes, 501-507, were introduced from 7 September 1968. The network saw much change over subsequent years, with the 507 being the last survivor of these early routes, although the 521 is a derivative of the original 501 which was withdrawn in the 2002 change. The other routes did not generally provide any unique features and have simply been absorbed by other "normal" routes. The 507 is largely unchaged from its original form, although the original route differed by running both ways along York Road, rather than via the cab road, and ran westbound via Marsham Street, whereas now it runs in both directions via Artillery Row and Horseferry Road.

The RA garage code was first introduced when the Red Arrow buses were based at Walworth garage (Hackney also operated some of them) before the dedicated Waterloo base was opened. There were fears that the artics would not be able to use the cramped Waterloo site, and ironically Camberwell, just across the road from Walworth, was considered for a time. However, these problems were resolved in time for operation to start at Waterloo.

Thanks to Jordan Young for compiling part of this article

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Chronologically 309 W16

Numerically 505 549
See also routes 521

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