ELT wins an award

The East London Transit is widely mocked for its name and the insistence that it's not a bus, even though it stops at bus stops, charges bus fares, is shown as a bus on maps and in journey planners as a bus, runs over the route of a bus that hasn't run since it was introduced, and - above all - uses the same vehicles as a bus. Writing "transit" on the side of a bus doesn't stop it being a bus, writing "Rolls Royce" on a Datsun Cherry would achieve the same - nothing except a laugh.

It was going to be  a tram, and at one point monorail plans were if not drawn up, given the artist's impression treatment.

Anyway, to crown it all it's now won an award, partly because it serves Barking Town Centre, from where buses were excluded in the early 1990s.

So that's divert buses away from a town centre and 15 or so years later undo your work, but calling a spade a material extraction device, and get an award for it. Hmm.

Buses

So it's goodbye 369 and - as far as Barking is concerned - goodbye 179. And hello EL1 and EL2, which we were told were not buses but East London Transit. For anyone who is confused, these stop at bus stops and charge bus fares and are counted as buses on the TfL journey planner.

TfL has neglected to include these changes in its snazzy interactive on line bus maps and it doesn't help that if you check for "disruptions", the system tells you that either the route doesn't exist or there are no disruptions. I don't know about you, but a route not existing is kind of a disruption to me, especially when it existed OK yesterday.

Barking to lose 179 bus service

Edited 16 October following clarification from TfL


When ELT routes EL1 and EL2 start up in February, the 179 route will terminate at Ilford and no longer serve Ilford Lane and Barking. I missed the consultation on this - it's now a done deal.

The letter I have from TfL says the bus frequency in Ilford Lane will be 16 buses per hour (combined 169, EL1, EL2).

The two separate routes that will make up the ELT are:

• Ilford to Dagenham Dock via Barking town centre
• Barking town centre to Dagenham Dock via Barking Riverside

The second of these clearly won't serve Ilford Lane.

TfL responded to my query saying that from early next spring the 369 route will cease, EL2 will run between Ilford and Dagenham Dock and EL1 will run the same route but terminate at Thames View Estate. EL3 will start up in 2013 and run between Barking and Dagenham Dock via Barking Riverside.