New service provides speedy connection for south London.
The Superloop bus service continues to roll out apace, with the introduction of the SL5 on Saturday 3 February. The new route will start at Bromley North station and whizz through to Park Street in central Croydon (think of it as joining the 5 and 6 on a clock face). Four services will run per hour, or five in the morning peak.
The whole point of the Superloop is to provide a fast service between major centres, without lots of stops in-between. In this case, SL5 fits in nine intermediates, including Bromley South, Bethlem Royal Hospital and East Croydon station. The full journey is timetabled at 30 minutes. TfL's journey planner suggests that the current quickest route between the two might take 52 minutes — so quite a time saving.
The SL5 joins six existing Superloop services in a scheme that will soon (almost) encircle the city, and with two spokes heading in to the centre.
- SL8 (Uxbridge to White City)
- SL6 (West Croydon to Russell Square)
- SL7 (Croydon to Heathrow)
- SL9 (Heathrow to Harrow)
- SL10 (Harrow to North Finchley)
- SL1 (North Finchley to Walthamstow Central)
Further services will come hot on the wheels of the SL5. The SL3 from Bromley to Thamesmead is due to start running on 24 February 2024, while the SL2 from Walthamstow Central to North Woolwich is coming in March. The scheme will be pretty much complete at that point — a comfortable two months before the Mayoral Election, giving Sadiq Khan a tangible "look what I did" to shout about.
The only remaining Superloop service at that point will be the SL4 from Grove Park to Westferry Circus (Canary Wharf). This final spoke service can't start until the completion of the Silvertown Tunnel, expected in March 2025.
