If you’ve lived in London for any length of time you’ll have come across one of the strangest features of London transport. You’ll wait ages for a certain bus, first there is no bus for ages – then three of the same number all come along at the same time!

Why do London buses always seem to come in groups?

There is actually a scientific explanation for this!

The first bus – let’s say number 78 – sets out from the garage.  At every stop there are quite a few people waiting to get on.  Then the traffic lights seem to be against them – the bus has to keep stopping at red lights and becomes slightly behind schedule. This means that there are more people at the next bus stop, so they take longer to get on.

Meanwhile the next 78 comes out of the garage.  For the first few stops there are a normal number of passengers – and maybe this bus gets all green lights and carries on perhaps slightly ahead of schedule. Quite soon this second bus comes to stops where more people than normal get on the first bus.  This means that there are fewer people to get on this bus, so it begins to catch the first bus up!

Sometimes the second bus overtakes the first bus – but then it is slowed down by the longer queues, so you have two buses running along almost together. Meanwhile, a third bus comes out of the garage and sails quickly through the street, picking up only a few passengers at each stop.  This bus therefore catches up with the other two and – hey presto! – three buses all at once.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Life in London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.