The French Tower

It might be a stretch to ask whether anyone reading remembers the weird situation route W16 had in 2012 when it had three operators within the space of a month. Arriva lost the route to First, who then sold Northumberland Park (NP) to Go Ahead 4 weeks later. It's very rare any route has this happen, and naturally no route has matched that until a few weeks ago when route 414 became another route to go through three operators within the space of a month.

Abellio London up until the end of the 12th of November used to hold the contract to operate the 414, but Tower Transit took the helm on the 13th of November, although this wasn't to last for very long as RATP and Tower Transit had both announced a plan to merge operations into a company called RATP Dev Transit, and this would involve Westbourne Park moving over to a new company controlled majority by RATP, with Tower Transit retaining a minority shareholding. 

9487 seen on stand at Maida Hill
© EastLondoner

Route 414 is one of London's younger routes, only starting operation in November 2002 operating out of Westbourne Park (X) under First London, and running between Maida Hill, Elgin Avenue and Fulham, High Street, although buses would have to dead run to Putney Bridge Station from Fulham to stand. This arrangement was then changed so that buses would continue all the way to Putney Bridge in service from June 2002. January 2005 saw the northern terminus altered to be Maida Hill, Chippenham Gardens. No change then came until 2009 when tender saw Abellio London taking over the 414 out of their Battersea (QB) garage where it would spend the next 12 years. The tender in 2020 saw the route's tranche come up at a time when TfL were looking at many ways to save money, and it was decided that upon tender the route would be withdrawn between Marble Arch and Maida Hill, running only between Putney Bridge and Marble Arch. Tower Transit won the contract on tender using Alexander Dennis Enviro400 Hybrid buses previously allocated to route 23.

DNH39131 at Putney Bridge
© EastLondoner

Tower Transit took on the contract on the 13th of November, a couple of weeks earlier than planned in order to allow Abellio to take on route 63 at the same time. The route was cut back to Marble Arch on the same day, as planned. I went out a couple of weeks later on the 9th of December to take a look at how the route was doing, and to also try to do the route while still under Tower Transit operation. One thing that automatically stood out was the still the 'as new' state of the buses. Although they'd now undergone two refurbishments within the space of 10 years I'd not blame members of the public for thinking that these buses were completely brand new. Upon arrival at Putney Bridge I didn't need to wait long for a 414 to turn up. The journey itself was quite quick, with it just taking us over half an hour to make it to Marble Arch. Although while the journey was quick, it seemed the bus behind us had left very shortly after we had, and we managed to catch up the bus ahead of us. When we managed to reach Knightsbridge we were the middle bus in a triple bunching. Although these service control issues should hopefully be ironed out over the next couple of months as the controllers and drivers get used to the various challenges presented by the route. 

DNH39131 on stand at Marble Arch with Winter Wonderland in the background
© EastLondoner

The cut back to Marble Arch has made the 414 a very similar route to the 14, with all but three stops shared with the route now. At a time where TfL is extremely cash strapped, this obviously raises questions about the long term future of the route. Is a route that parallels another route almost end to end really worth the money? I'll leave that to you, the readers to decide. 

At the start of the post I did mention that RATP have since taken on route 414, and you're probably expecting the next part of the post to focus on their tenure on the route. However if you ventured out now you'd be hard pressed to find any sign of RATP on the 414, with the only giveaway being the legal lettering on the buses changing from Westbourne Park to Stamford Brook, which is the RATP head office. It's expected towards the start of next year that logos should start changing, alongside fleet codes which will see the "DNH" class codes replaced with "ADH" class codes alongside new numbers to fit in with the RATP system. 

DNH39122 seen on Park Lane
© EastLondoner

There's not much else to write about on this change, however the only thing that can be said is that this change sets the precedent for many future ones to come. It could be argued the 414 has got off very lightly with its cut back to Marble Arch, with rumours that some routes in the future could be at complete risk of withdrawal or much more severe cuts. Once upon a time the future for public transport and TfL looked very bright, however now the future looks to be a very bleak one indeed.