TfL slammed for scrapping 347 London bus route between Ockenden, Upminster and Romford

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Havering Council leader Ray Morgon has slammed Transport for London (TfL) for scrapping an underused Romford bus route.

TfL said it axed the 347 between Ockenden and Romford due to it being one of the least used in the capital.

Retaining route 347 as it currently operates would require a subsidy of equivalent to £10 per trip, compared to an average subsidy of 0.39p across the TfL bus network.

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TfL said it axed the 347 between Ockenden and Romford due to it being one of the least used in the capital.TfL said it axed the 347 between Ockenden and Romford due to it being one of the least used in the capital.
TfL said it axed the 347 between Ockenden and Romford due to it being one of the least used in the capital. | E01/Flickr

The bus service will be withdrawn on Saturday, 18th January 2025 and replaced mainly by an extension to route 346, which makes 110 journeys a day between Upminster and Harold Hill – compared to the 347’s eight.

In November, TfL increased the frequency of route 370, which connects Ockenden, Upminster and Romford, from four buses per hour to five (Monday – Saturday daytime) and from two to four buses per hour on Sundays and all evenings.

However, council leader Ray Morgon said the withdrawal of route 347 was “extremely disappointing” and that, despite “extensive lobbying,” the north-south transport links in the borough remained “woefully inadequate”.

He said in a statement: “The 347 route may have lower usage than central London buses, but to the people that use that route to travel between Romford and Ockendon each day, it is another important connection that is being unfairly taken away.

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“This part of the borough already suffered from the expansion of ULEZ, forcing residents and commuters to ditch their cars in favour of public transport – and now those transport options are dwindling. What are our residents supposed to do?

“Perhaps instead of wasting funds on an ultimately unnecessary rebrand of the London Overground, which saw the Havering segments of the service renamed the Liberty Line, TfL could invest in Havering and outer-London boroughs and give us the transport infrastructure we desperately need.”

The rebrand, which went live in late November, cost the transport body £6.3m.

TfL says it has increased bus services in Havering by a net total of 3% since 2019, in addition to committing £1.5m in infrastructure improvements to the borough this year.

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Those improvements include 30km of new cycle routes, over 15km of new bus lanes, and more than 50 new signalised pedestrian crossings.

Geoff Hobbs, TfL’s director of public transport service planning, said: “We are committed to providing an extensive bus network for Londoners and regularly review our services according to customer demand.

“Since 2023, we have increased public transport services in outer London by one million additional kilometres including links to central London via Tube, rail and improved bus links.”

He added: “We have sought to reduce the impact of this change on passengers as much as possible to reflect current customer demand and we will continue to review any changes to bus routes.”

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