London Bus Prefixes

This post purely serves for me to complain about something that has no bearing on my life, simply because there are some interesting things about the thing I am complaining about. Yes, it's about buses, but I reckon that everyone could do with discussions about making changes that just make more sense on paper.

There are over 600 bus routes in London, but the highest numbered bus route is the 969, only running twice a week mainly to take the elderly from local estates to an ASDA in Roehampton. Before that is the 728, a temporary service whilst Wandsworth Bridge is closed, then the 549, an infrequent route (the highest numbered regular TfL route) running from Loughton to South Woodford (but a consultation wants to remove that route from existence), then the 533, a temporary service for when Hammersmith Bridge is closed, and then you're onto the 499 bus route - a regular, permanent, frequent bus route.

That's not to mention the countless gaps in the bus route numbering network - there is no 10, no 48, no 82 (in number only - it was renumbered the 13), no 84 (because another non-London route has that number)...it makes for a rather dull, uninteresting sequence that you wouldn't find in the OEIS.

There are so many numbers in the world, even imaginary ones, but TfL limit themselves to prefixes (and once suffixes) for many bus routes. Why limit yourself so much, you may ask? Well, it's historical preference, along with the lack of willingness to change to be practical.

The TfL prefix alphabet consists of 15 letters (soon to be 14 due to the Superloop proposal, which will see all X-prefixed routes become SL-prefixed routes). L is the only letter of that alphabet to not be a prefix on its own. And some of the prefixes in this system are rather baffling.

The first prefixed route is the A10, referring to Heathrow Airport. Then you have the B11 to 16, which all operate around Bexleyheath. So far, so good. Yes, there aren't any A1-9 or B1-10, but that can be explained by virtue of some of these numbers having already been used for routes before. Many of the prefixes do make sense, and are often used for geographic designations, such as K for Kingston and U for Uxbridge. It only gets out of hand when the same prefix is reused for multiple different areas.

The C in C1 and C10 refers to Central London; the C in C3 refers to Chelsea; the C in C11 refers to Camden. H could refer to Hampstead, Harrow or Hounslow; P refers to Peckham, unless you're on the P4 or P5; W refers to Walthamstow, yet is used for routes such as the W7 which don't go to Walthamstow. Sometimes TfL likes to have two prefix letters - EL (for the East London BRT system); SL (for the not Super not a loop); RV (used on the RV1 (meaning River) back when it existed).

Then you have the prefixes which are odd at first glance: G1 (the only "G" route) refers to St George's Hospital (there used to be a G2 which served the same place) and the R routes serving Orpington (which refers to Roundabout, the original branding used for the routes). N (for night buses) is rather normal, each route prefixed as such referring to a daytime counterpart, except the N5, N20 and N97 don't match at all to the 5, 20 and 97, and there is no daytime route numbered the 271 (though only since recently), 550 or 551 in London.

One thing transport networks should be if branded is they should be simple enough to understand and navigate. True, these prefixes mean absolutely nothing, in fact changing them would be even more confusing than keeping the routes as they are. But TfL are happy to change such route numbers when it suits them for simplicity's sake - why can't they stop London bus route numbers from being the tangled mess that they are?