The Day Route That Was Never Meant To Be? The 603 - London’s Awkward Routes: Epsiode 3

You've probably not heard much about the 603, to many it's just a school route. However there is quite a lot to know about this bus route, the history behind it politically and the importance of it for the 20 years or so its been in operation. As the title suggests, the 603 has always had frequent calls for it to be made a 7-day-a-week all day service over the years...although it's never quite materialised. So what do I think of the prospect of it becoming an all day service? In this video I'll be reviewing the 603, the areas that it passes through and how I would improve the service. If you liked this video, make sure to like, subscribe and share this video as it massively helps me out when you do! Now, on with the video...
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As with most of my videos, there are images in here that aren't my own, and so all copyright goes to their respective owners.

[@dadiddy]

I absolutely love your proposed 268 & 240 changes. I’ve always wanted the 240 to go to Hampstead Heath.

[@somenorthlondoner]

Not too sure, obviously it was a suggestion I made but the 240 can be filled with traffic particularly in the Mill Hill area so I don't know whether or not throwing in Hampstead congestion is worth it

[@Ro99]

First the H3 and now this. It’s so bizarre seeing videos about areas I’m so familiar with. Honestly watching these videos makes me remember how fortunate I am to know these areas, how much I should appreciate them and that I shouldn’t take them for granted.

[@somenorthlondoner]

They are really nice areas, I don’t think I’ll be returning to them for quite a while in this series though ☹️

[@ahuman9143]

Feel a similar way to my local school route, the 651 (Romford-Chase Cross), which would be great as a full time route as it overlaps other bus routes in the North Romford area, meaning that if one of the routes is experiencing reliability issues, you could just take that route instead and links up a lot of the North Romford routes together.

[@sebz365]

good vid g

[@somenorthlondoner]

Cheers :)

[@MrBoombastic1]

Amazing video! I think the 633 (running between Coulsdon South and Pollards Hill) also has a similar purpose aligned with the 603: it has bi-directional routing and doesn't go to a specific school. Sadly it doesn't operate during school holidays.

[@somenorthlondoner]

There probably are more examples I definitely agree, I didn't know about the 633! Certainly unusual though

[@Maunico0809]

As a person from the New York City Metro Area, we have our fair share of odd bus routes, but I’m always fascinated by all the oddballs London has.

[@somenorthlondoner]

I know! I’ll be posting another 2 next week 🤫

[@Maunico0809]

@@somenorthlondonerooooooo

[@andrewjameson5918]

I have taken the 210 from East Finchley at the end of last year whilst visitng some family history in the area.

[@somenorthlondoner]

That’s really cool!

[@ricktownend9144]

Very many thanks for this detailed and thoughtful commentary, and for all the historical and literary details. The area is familiar to me from R Austin Freeman's 'Dr Thorndyke' detective books - several incidents take place around Hampstead and Highgate! Dickens visiting Hampstead may be to do with the horse--bus routes of the time ...
The wider travel problem is 'too many cars'; the standard public transport solution appears to be to put more buses on the most popular flows, but maybe a better answer is to make it possible to make all possible journeys easily (as a car driver can - ignoring congestion). This would involve better interchanges, and higher frequencies on all routes: I don't go with 'matching buses-per-hour to demand' on each individual route - the network frequency is really what counts when trying to attract people out of their cars. We know this approach does work - the whole Underground system has been going successfully for over a hundred years, where you just need the map to travel about it!
Look forward to your next video

[@somenorthlondoner]

Yes I think that tends to be the problem, adding more buses to a variety of destinations helps alleviate overcrowding in a sense whilst providing other links to allow some sort of modal shift towards buses. Some of these overcrowded routes are likely overcrowded due to the perhaps long winded routes that people need to take to get from one place to another.
I will always hold Livingstone’s transport strategy in one of the highest regards, but one of my criticisms is he tried focusing investment on adding buses to already well served corridors without providing much in the way of new links. Of course there were some instances where this did happen, but routes such as the 349 are regularly tipped for some sort of diversion to make them a little more useful rather than just following the 149/259/279