The borough has only one pair of bus stops on the Superloop route
An outer London council has declined to improve a Superloop route unless Transport for London (TfL) commits to providing extra bus stops. Richmond Council is pressing TfL for extra stops in Hampton and Hampton Hill along the SL7 route, which runs between West Croydon and Heathrow Central bus stations serving five outer London boroughs.
Richmond’s only pair of bus stops along the route is on Broad Street, in Teddington, but TfL currently has no plans to introduce extra stops in Hampton or Hampton Hill.
Council officers had put forward plans to use £50,000 of TfL grants to draw up proposals to improve the SL7 route, in a bid to shorten bus journey times and increase reliability.
But Richmond’s transport committee agreed the authority could not move ahead with these improvements until TfL committed to providing another pair of Superloop bus stops in the borough.
Lib Dem councillor Alexander Ehmann said it was “clear that we need such leverage in order to bring about change” on November 9.
Councillor Ehmann said: “It is such a small element overall of improvement for our residents that I think that we have to hold out for the greater good.”
The proposals involved introducing more waiting and loading restrictions on Uxbridge Road and Park Road and widening a bus stop on Ferry Road along the SL7 route, along with banning turns at the junction of Hampton Hill High Street, Hampton Road and Park Road to slash congestion.
Councillors said TfL had underinvested in public transport in Richmond for far too long, as they vowed to continue pushing for improvements.
Lib Dem councillor Carey Bishop said TfL had given Richmond an “unfair deal” on the SL7 route, as it travelled five miles from Broad Street to Hatton Cross without stopping – the longest gap on the service.
Councillor Bishop said: “It goes straight through our borough, and yet people in Hampton and Hampton Hill cannot get on. That matters because public transport access in the Hamptons is already poor.”
Lib Dem councillor James Chard added he could not support there being “five miles between stops, passing through but not stopping in one of the worst-connected areas of this borough”.
A TfL spokesperson previously said: “We are committed to providing a comprehensive, reliable bus service across the breadth of London and keep the network under constant review to ensure we invest our resources where they are needed most.
“We continue to monitor and review all Superloop routes to get a full understanding of how customers are using the network, working with local councils, to improve the bus network across the capital.”
Richmond has long been considered a borough with poor transport connectivity compared with other parts of the capital. The borough has only two stops on the London Underground, with both Richmond and Kew Gardens stations sitting on the District line. These two stations are also on the Overground’s Mildmay line, marking the only points the London Overground enters the borough.
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