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The diversion of the W3 bus for the Fireworks Festival has always been more problematic than most diversions. The 50k people arriving for the event in the dark were unable to read the diversion notices pinned to the bus stops, because these are unlit. But this year TfL have made some important improvements:

• On some bus stops, at least, huge diversion notices have been placed in bus shelters – which are of course well lit.
• These notices appeared a fortnight before the event – more notice given this year than usual.
• They take the form of an informative, eye-catching map - not the list of roads on the diversion route which used to be TfL’s default mode of communication (incomprehensible to locals, let alone visitors).

It is not clear why they have chosen some bus stops and not others – but this is defintely a step in the right direction. The last couple of years TfL have put a huge diversion notice (prompted by our campaign) just on the bus stop on Station Road, near Wood Green station. Last year it just consisted of a list of roads, so was not very helpful.

The W3 Bus User group has been campaigning about the lack of information about diversions for a couple of years, and this year our in-person meeting in July with a rep from TfL certainly seemed to be much more productive than our communications with them have been up till now. The meeting was chaired very sympathetically by Joanne McCartney (our rep on the GLA), and local councillor Alessandra Rossetti contributed very helpful points.

Our campaigning has focused on the following points. Diversion notices need to:

• Display maps of the diversion route, not lists of roads.
• Be displayed in bus shelters – where they will be visible in the dark, and where most bus users stand.
• Not be restricted to bus shelters in the immediate vicinity of the cause of the diversion.
• Also be placed within buses, to inform passengers who have got on the bus not realising that it is on diversion (we have common cause with bus drivers on this point – with the support of the union rep at Wood Green Bus Garage).

Online information should display maps of diversions, not lists of roads as at present.

And last but not least – to give people advance notice of when planned diversions would take place, we asked for an annual list of all the events at Ally Pally requiring planned diversions over the subsequent year to be placed in bus shelters, as also for all such events at Spurs Stadium (the route gets truncated for these). 

The diversion notices that TfL are placing in bus shelters are huge, because the frames in which they are placed are huge. We suggested that it would be more cost-effective, and would allow space for many different kinds of notices, if they used smaller frames. Something like the following mockup:

This is the back wall of the bus shelter opposite Ally Pally Garden Centre. Four frames (the same size as the notices currently placed on bus stops) have been superimposed on the right, empty panel (these back walls are never used for advertising, so are quite often empty, or occupied by vacuous TfL posters like the one on the left). The contents of the frames are as follows:

• Top left - the annual list of events requiring planned diversions/truncations of the route.
• Bottom left - the bus timetable.
• Bottom right - diversion notice (removeable) for current diversion (if there is one). 
• Top right - information about truncation of the route for events at Spurs Stadium.

There is of course room for other notices, with the possibility of replacing the big poster on the left if necessary. 

So our campaign continues - pursuing the improvements in the provision of information listed above. Comments welcome, and do get in touch if you would like to join us!