Route 157 Observations

Yesterday, it was the turn of route 157 to pass to Arriva London South. Route 157 runs between Morden and Crystal Palace via Croydon, and began in 1934 running between Morden and Wallington. In 1935, it was extended to Raynes Park. In 1959 it was extended to Crystal Palace, as a replacement for Trolleybus route 654. In 1970 it was curtailed to terminate at Morden, with the exception of some afternoon journeys. In 1973 the route was converted to one person operation. In 1988 the route was reallocated to Sutton fully, and the Thornton Heath and South Croydon allocations were withdrawn. In 1997, as part of the Sutton area retendering scheme, the route gained 14 brand new Volvo Olympains with Northern Counties bodywork, replacing older MCW Metrobuses. In December 2001, Connex won the contract to run the route. They ordered 16 new Dennis Tridents with ALX400 bodywork, and ran it from their Beddington Cross depot. In 2004 Connex sold the London bus operations to National Express, who rebranded it as Travel London. In 2006 Travel London retained the contract for the 157 for another 5 years, on the basis of the existing Tridents being refurbished. In 2009 National Express sold the Travel London operation to NedRailways, who shortly after acquiring the business rebranded as Abellio, which is known as a goddess of apple trees. The Travel London operation was rebranded Abellio London. In 2011 Abellio retained it with Volvo B7TLs with Wright Eclipse Gemini bodies formerly used on route 188. These have proved problematic on the route, which has resulted in older Tridents being used often. The 157 has long suffered from poor reliability, due to its low PVR, long length and the fact it serves several bottlenecks. It therefore, it wasn't particularly surprising to hear in May 2016 that Arriva had won the contract for it from December 2016, on the basis of existing Enviro 400s from route 133. The route will be run officially from Thornton Heath, with drivers, the entire Sunday allocation, and 2 of the 17 vehicles based there. The remaining 15 vehicles will be stationed at Norwood garage. Yesterday, there was the usual teething troubles, with bunching quite frequent, but no doubt things will soon get better. I wish Arriva every success over the next 5 years. I hope you enjoy reading this post.