Following on from London Bus Routes One By One: 1-100, London Bus
Routes One By One: 101-200, London Bus Routes One By One: 201-300,
and London Bus Routes One By One: 301-969, this fifth and final volume
in the series takes a look at the route numbers with letter prefixes.
They derive from the Reshaping Plan of 1966, whereby established trunk
routes were broken up, and their outer sections turned into feeder
services linking interchange hubs or Underground stations. As these new
routes were intended to be operated by flat-fare buses, it was decided
to distinguish them by using letter prefixes based on geographical area.
Flat-fare operation proved unreliable and was soon dropped, though the
lettered routes remained, and the system was applied to the normal
network when it came time to further sectionalize bus routes because of
London's insurmountable traffic.
As in previous volumes, a potted history of the routes and their routing
details are accompanied by up-to-date color photographs showing the
buses that operate on each route. Illustrated with over 190 color
photographs, this volume represents an up-to-date snapshot of the
fascinating modern London bus scene as it stands as of the latter half
of 2021.
