Cheshunt is a fast growing town and has a lot of potential in the near future but it’s buses are a joke and a far cry from decades ago. The town was once served from early morning to late at night by numerous London bus routes including the 242 and 279 and the green 310 and 316 buses and limited stop Greenline 715. Cheshunt was once a key town on the edge of London’s bus network and it benefitted from frequent buses all day, 7 days a week to Enfield, Potters Bar, Chingford and destinations all the way to Smithfield Market near Liverpool Street station including at Edmonton, Seven Sisters, Tottenham and Finsbury Park. For a time, Cheshunt even received a night bus service on route N90.

 

 

Today the situation couldn’t be more different, some of the route numbers are the same but the difference in the level of service couldn’t be starker. 242 still goes to Potters Bar but until recently only went there just 4 times a day with the route mainly serving as a shuttle between Waltham Cross and Brookfield Shopping Centre in Cheshunt. Now it is hourly throughout the full route, but the route is very unreliable and plagued by traffic as much of the route has had virtually no usable bus service for many many years, services end around 7pm. 251 links Hammond Street, Waltham Cross and Upshire in Waltham Abbey but is unreliable and services end at just 7:25pm. The other main route is the 310 which sounds frequent enough at every 15 minutes but is always late and services often bunch together leaving passengers waiting far longer than this for what should be a frequent bus route. After 7:30pm, a minimal hourly service runs with the last bus out of Waltham Cross towards Cheshunt at just 10:40pm, severely limiting the ability to take part in evening and nighttime activities. The bus service is similarly limiting on weekends, especially Sundays. The service has been like this for many years with no signs of any improvements from Arriva. In general, it is a lottery if the bus will turn up when it is supposed to or at all and using buses to connect to local rail stations is almost impossible, due to the unreliability of the buses and a lack of coordination. It regularly takes longer to get across the local area than it does for the train to get to Liverpool Street when using public transport. The buses are holding the town back and stopping people from visiting our town and contributing to the local economy. 

Local Buses are totally inadequate for Cheshunt.

 

 

Other than the unreliability, they are expensive to use with many singles costing £3 with no hopper fares and no automatic capping. Passengers must buy a day ticket up front to benefit from a capped fare. This is prohibitively expensive for the many short journeys people take on buses in Cheshunt and is poor value compared to driving or the £1.75 hopper fare on London’s buses. As local buses fall outside London’s cap, there is little incentive to use them despite our rail stations benefiting from being in zones 7 and 8, which receive daily and weekly capping of fares. Local buses need the same fare system and operator (TFL) as the Weaver Line that serves the town.

Unsurprisingly car ownership is very high here with many houses owning multiple cars and vans, as they are the only convenient way of getting around for many journeys, especially to places like Enfield and Barnet. Traffic is a big issue in Cheshunt and the rest of the borough. But the town grinds to a halt when there is roadworks or there is an accident on the M25 or A10 roads. Residents need a proper alternative mode of transport, like the neighbouring Borough of Enfield currently receives. The A10 itself makes walking and cycling unpleasant and is a dividing line through Cheshunt and Enfield.

Cheshunt has many plans to expand soon and is planning a major employment site adjacent to Theobald’s Grove and Waltham Cross. A Google Data Centre is being built nearby too, both vastly improving local employment opportunities. But they are not currently reachable by public transport. Broxbourne Council is planning a major expansion of Brookfield Centre as a new town centre and homes for 1000s of people are planned nearby, as well as in Rosedale Estate, Goffs Oak, Cuffley, at Cheshunt Lakeside (near Cheshunt Station) and at High Leigh in Hoddesdon. Similar expansions of housing are planned in nearby Harlow as well. Services, especially public transport are not anywhere near adequate enough in this borough for all the new residential areas and traffic will become much worse unless there is a massive expansion in the bus service, to bring it into line with services in Enfield. Direct bus connections to neighbouring areas of North London are desperately needed too. It also needs to integrate far more with trains too, to maximise local benefits of using public transport.

This would bring Cheshunt into line with nearby towns like Waltham Cross, Borehamwood, Chingford, Loughton and Debden.

The expansion of ULEZ to the London border last summer also highlights the need for vastly improved bus services in Cheshunt and the rest of the borough.

 

 

Demands

We the undersigned call on Transport for London, Hertfordshire County Council, Essex County Council, Broxbourne Council and the Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan to support the following.

Extension of the 217 to Hammond Street to replace the infrequent and unreliable Arriva 251. The Extension of the 317 to Upshire in Waltham Abbey could provide the opportunity of a hopper fare at Waltham Cross, to maintain local connections between Cheshunt and Waltham Abbey, whilst providing a direct link into North London. Both would provide frequent all day, every day integrated connections to Enfield, with the 217 providing a direct and frequent bus connection between Cheshunt, Edmonton and Wood Green. 

Either an extension of the 327 or a new town route between Enfield and Cheshunt providing important connections between residential areas, rail services and Waltham Cross Town Centre. This service should run every 30 minutes to time with trains and run later than the existing 327 does at present, which right now is a very short route running only between Bullsmoor Estate and Waltham Cross.

The restoration of the C1 as a regular service between Cuffley and Cheshunt Stations linking residential areas in Hammond Street and Flamstead End to Brookfield Centre and both stations. The timetable of this should be coordinated with the 242 to improve overall frequency to and from Cuffley, as well as support new housing developments in this part of town. Both routes should be under the TFL network. Cheshunt station urgently needs a regular and frequent bus service, not just when the Overground has maintenance works.

A new TFL bus route from Hoddesdon to Enfield to improve local connectivity, employment opportunities and improve services to Broxbourne station, in both directions. This service could introduce a much needed direct link from our borough to Chase Farm Hospital too, the nearest hospital to Cheshunt. This service could partly replace the 310 with a more frequent and far more reliable service.

Restore the 242 to a London Bus Route once more – Waltham Cross to Potters Bar. Many buses run empty from Potters Bar Garage through Cuffley to Waltham Cross and use many of the same roads as the 242, it makes sense to run the route as apart of TFL’s network, as was once the case. This would fill a major gap in services just above the north of London.

Transferring local bus routes to TFL would integrate bus fares with rail fares and give incentives to improving timetable connections between bus and train, helping to reduce local congestion and give people a genuine choice of transport. The introduction of TFL bus caps to Cheshunt would make using the bus a much more affordable option. Buses across the borough need to connect to trains at Waltham Cross, Theobalds Grove, Cheshunt and Broxbourne rail stations as much as possible, all day from start of rail service to end of rail service, 7 days a week. This will prove essential if Crossrail 2 ever gets built with one of its terminuses planned at Broxbourne station. Right now, the failure to integrate buses and trains locally at all, results in a long walk home, inconvenient long waits for buses, parking issues for local residents or being forced to use an expensive taxi to go the few short miles most people here live from rail services. This must change.

This petition also supports the Bring Back Red Buses – Waltham Abbey petition, specifically the extensions of the 215 and 379 routes from Chingford to at least Waltham Abbey but ideally Waltham Cross to maximise connectivity. The reintroduction of TFL bus routes between Waltham Cross and Epping (currently Central Connect 13) as well as between Waltham Cross and Loughton (currently Arriva 66). These extensions would also be massively beneficial to residents of Cheshunt as London buses are affordable, accessible and frequent. Bus frequencies at off peak, late evening and at night as well as at weekends would be significantly improved and greatly enhanced regional connectivity across the London, Herts and Essex border would make driving a choice rather than a necessity. These extensions could be planned across both Cheshunt and Waltham Abbey at the same time to maximise connectivity to employment, rail services, hospitals and schools, ensure efficiency of services and be cost effective to run whilst properly serving the built up area and integrating neighbouring towns with each other.