Express bus scheme the Superloop is making it easier to zip around outer London
It’s a well known fact of London life that it’s super easy to travel into the centre of town but an absolute nightmare to travel around the edge of it – you either have to do pointless zig-zagging into the city and out again via tube and train in another direction or quite literally go round the houses on excessively long and winding bus routes. And with the ULEZ now covering the Greater London boundary, zipping around town by car has become a very expensive option.
That’s where Sadiq Khan’s Superloop comes in. The new scheme, part of a £6 million investment in the outer London bus network, consists of routes with fewer stops that skirt around the edges of the city rather than going deep into it, making journeys between neighbourhoods much quicker.
What are the current Superloop routes?
The routes currently running on the Superloop network are:
- SL1, from North Finchley to Walthamstow Central
- SL2, from Walthamstow Central to North Woolwich
- SL3, from Thamesmead to Bromley
- SL5, from Bromley to Croydon
- SL6, from Russell Square to West Croydon
- SL7, from Croydon to Heathrow Airport
- SL8, from Uxbridge to White City
- SL9, from Heathrow Airport to Harrow
- SL10, from Harrow to North Finchley
When will the other Superloop routes be running?
The final Superloop route from the ten original sections, the SL4 (from Canary Wharf to Grove Park), will start operating in 2025 as it will need to run through the Silvertown Tunnel. But there could be an additional extension to the network as Sadiq Khan has promised the introduction of the Bakerloop service between Elephant & Castle and Lewisham if he wins the upcoming London Mayoral election in May. The Bakerloop route would follow the line of the proposed-but-unfunded Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham.
Where will the Bakerloop route be running to and from?
If introduced, the Bakerloop bus route (complete with a brown colour scheme and matching moquette seating to align it with the tube line), will run from Elephant & Castle to Lewisham, with stops in Burgess Park, Old Kent Road and New Cross Gate, with fewer stops than the number 21 bus that connects Old Kent Road and Lewisham. There’s no timetable for the introduction of the new service yet but we’d expect to have more details following the Mayoral election.
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