Two-stop, one-way bus service won’t be terminated despite zero passengers

A RAIL company will not shut down its two stop, one-way bus service that runs once a week, despite it sometimes having no passengers.

Chiltern Railways has run the service between West Ealing and West Ruislip since December 2022 because it is “significantly” cheaper than closing the railway line.

The bus takes an eight-mile journey from Argyle Road each Wednesday at 11.17am, and is believed to be the only one of its kind in the country. It is impossible to buy a ticket on board and takes 25 minutes to run, six minutes more than the train it replaced.

A single ticket costs £7.40 and must be bought in advance, from the National Rail or Chiltern Railways websites. There is no advertised timetable and some weeks no one even uses it.

Another bus covers the same route every 12 minutes. It is used to replace a “ghost”, or “parliamentary” train that continues to run in order to keep a railway line open, according to the BBC.

Many railway operators don’t want to go through the expensive, time-consuming process of closing a railway line they may want to use again. Chiltern Railways said the service provided “weekly quirky journeys for transport enthusiasts and the travelling public”.

The Department for Transport ran a similar bus from Ealing Broadway to south London for £500 a day until 2009. Normal services resumed yesterday morning on Chiltern lines following a landslip in Launton, Bicester on Jan 11, which dislodged 1,200 tons of earth from a railway embankment.

Despite only two tracks being affected, engineers closed the entire line between London Marylebone, Oxford and the Midlands for two days to make the repairs. Richard Allen, Chiltern’s managing director apologised for the “significant disruption” .

In November last year, Chiltern apologised to customers who complained about limited capacity and short trains.

Chiltern said it had the oldest fleet of trains in the country, and blamed the knock-on impact of industrial action, a defective rail in the Northold Park area damaging wheel sets, and a closed railway between Princes Risborough and Aylesbury for causing delays in train maintenance, compelling the company to send out trains with fewer carriages.

It said it could not be sure when full capacity would be restored.