On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:52:18 -0800 (PST), Paul Corfield
wrote:

On Tuesday, 21 November 2017 15:29:32 UTC, Graham Harrison wrote:

When did the night network start expanding or has it been constant
since I was at school?

It has expanded at various different times. In the 1980s LT commissioned a study from (I think) Oxford University's transport unit to review the night network. Back then it was not leisure focussed and merely a small collection of routes suited to serving Fleet Street, wholesale markets and what was left of the Docks. In 1983 a full set of Sat night services was introduced to reflect leisure travel demands. The network was restructured in 1984 (Buses for Night Owls) with reasonable frequencies - half hourly or hourly. Coverage was much wider than before although the service pattern was quite complex because of getting buses to and from garages or Victoria (for crew breaks).

Patronage increased substantially and development continued through the 1990s under LRT with higher frequencies and moves towards simplification. In the 2000s much more money was injected into the network with the advent of 24 hour routes and a changing structure of routes. This was broadly successful with continued expansion in the suburbs and higher frequencies until 2012 or so. We did lose a few night bus routes in the Ken L era - the N58, N75, N106 and N274 all vanished. I am sure there are others. The irony is that if the first two had survived they would be very popular. The last real gasp of expansion was in 2014 with increased frequencies on routes serving Hoxton and Shoreditch.

Since then the advent of Uber (and similar services) plus the Night Tube has set the night network into reverse. Patronage is falling and savage cuts are now taking place almost weekly to hack back frequencies to save money. The only tiny upside from Night Tube was the introduction of the 222 and 238 as 24 hour services and a smattering of weekend night routes. I do not expect to see any expansion of the night network under the current Mayoralty and probably not under the next one either. The obsession with the Night Tube is extremely damaging to the Night Bus network.

There are two books on the history of London's Night Buses which are an excellent read with many photographs. One little statistic from the book - in 1984 only 78 buses were used on Sat nights, in Aug 2013 there were 892 buses in service on Sat nights.

Thank you for this interesting post.

--
jhk