Celebrating a British icon 117
By the late 1980s, such was the
loss of work to other operators
that London Buses began
looking at ways to reduce costs.
One was to establish low cost
local operating units, starting
with Kingston Bus in 1987.
Bexleybus was the fourth,
starting operations from a
reopened Bexleyheath garage on
16 January 1988 with 107 buses,
including 28 new leased Northern
Counties-bodied Leyland
Olympians double-deckers that
had been ordered by Greater
Manchester Buses. Rather than
the usual red, this fleet was
blue and cream. The launch of
the new operating unit, which
was overseen by London Buses’
Selkent subsidiary, prompted the
closure of Sidcup garage.
Like some of the other low cost
units, Bexleybus suffered frompoor industrial relations and its
services became unreliable. In a
drive to improve reliability of its
other 15 routes, in October 1998
London Transport transferred
routes 422 (Bexley-Woolwich)
and 492 (Sidcup-Dartford) to
Boro’line Maidstone, owned by
Maidstone Borough Council.
When Bexleybus lost contracts
to operate nine of its routes
to London Central in the next
round of tendering, London
Buses transferred the garage
from Selkent to London Central
to coincide with the start of the
new contracts on 24 January- That also was the end of
the Bexleybus brand.
In September 1994 London
Central became the fourth
London Buses subsidiary to
be sold in the privatisation
programme. It was acquired
by the Go-Ahead Group, which
expanded in May 1996 to buy
London General from the
management team that had
purchased it at privatisation. In
2017 all of Go-Ahead’s London
operations were placed under the
London General operator licence,
although separate fleetnames are
still used.
The London tendering regime
means that there is always a
risk of garages losing work and
in January 2018 three routes,
equating to work for around 30
buses, were lost to Stagecoach
Selkent and Arriva London.
The garage currently operates
six all-day routes for Transport
for London. One of these runs
24hr a day while two provide a
night service at the weekend.
It provides buses for four
schooldays-only services.LEFT: RTs and
DMS-class
Fleetlines at
Bexleyheath
garage in April- One of the
RTs has worked
the 89, one of the
routes still based
there over 40 years
later. GERALD MEAD
Routes operated by Go-Ahead, Bexleyheath garageLondon Bus Garages
Route Vehicle type Peak vehicle
requirementContract
start date
89 (Lewisham-Slade Green)
N89 (Lewisham-Erith)Alexander Dennis Enviro400 15 21 Aug 2017132 (Bexleyheath-North
Greenwich) 24hr Friday/
SaturdayAlexander Dennis Enviro400 15 1 Oct 2016244 (Abbey Wood-Queen
Elizabeth Hospital)Alexander Dennis Enviro200 12 22 Jan 2011486 (Bexleyheath-North
Greenwich) 24hr Friday/
SaturdayAlexander Dennis Enviro400 16 22 Feb 2014B11
(Thamesmead-Bexleyheath)Alexander Dennis Enviro200 7 22 Jan 2011B16
(Bexleyheath-Kidbrooke)Alexander Dennis Enviro200 9 20 Jan 2018