The latest Superloop bus route — the SL10 express bus service between Harrow and North Finchley — has opened, with another route, the SL1 between North Finchley and Walthamstow Central, hot on its heels.
2023 has been the year of the Superloop — in fact, maybe THAT should've been the word of the year, rather than rizz, but anyway. The nearly-but-not-quite-perfect-circle of express bus routes orbits London, with three 'spokes' thrown in for good measure. The SL10, which runs between between Harrow and North Finchley, is an all-electric route which opened on 25 November 2023, and calls at Kenton, Kingsbury and Hendon.
On Saturday 9 December 2023, the SL1 (these routes are very much NOT being opened in chronological order) begins running between North Finchley and Walthamstow Central. The latest two routes join others which started up earlier in 2023:
- SL8 (Uxbridge to White City)
- SL6 (West Croydon to Russell Square)
- SL7 (Croydon to Heathrow)
- SL9 (Heathrow to Harrow)
The rest of the (almost) transport loop will open in spring 2024 as SL2, SL3 and SL5. That leaves the SL4 'spoke', which runs from Canary Wharf to Grove Park, and won't start running till 2025.
As has been pointed out by Diamond Geezer, four of the Superloop routes already existed wholesale, while others cover similar ground to existing routes (for instance, some of the SL10 route is also covered by the 183), but the idea is that Superloop buses stop less, and reach their final destination faster.
With 2024 being a mayoral election year — and seeing as bringing down traffic and pollution in the capital is one of the incumbent mayor's flagship policies — we can expect to hear the word 'Superloop' bandied around a heck of a lot more in the next six months.
