Night Buses Return to the Riverside Route
Night buses will run again along the riverside route from 1 September, three years after the service was withdrawn. The transport authority said on Tuesday that the N12 would operate hourly between midnight and five, seven nights a week, funded by a two-year grant from the regional government.
The route was cut in 2023 after passenger numbers fell to an average of eleven people a night. Officials said at the time that the money was better spent on daytime frequency. A petition to restore the service gathered 4,200 signatures last winter, most of them, according to its organisers, from hospital and hotel staff finishing shifts after the last train.
“This is a service the city should never have lost,” said Councillor Devi Raman, who chairs the transport committee. A spokesperson for the authority declined to say whether the route would continue once the grant expires, adding only that usage would be reviewed in the second year.
The authority has not published the figures behind its projection that the N12 will carry 300 passengers a night. Two other night routes withdrawn in 2023, the N4 and the N7, are unaffected by Tuesday's announcement.
Glossary
- a grant
- — money given for a stated purpose, usually by a government
- a petition
- — a signed request asking an authority to do something
- a projection
- — an estimate of what will happen, worked out from figures
- declined to say
- — refused to answer, politely and on the record