London Buses route 453

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**453**

Management
Operated by	Selkent
Garage	Plumstead
Vehicle	Mercedes-Benz O530G Citaro Articulated bus
Peak vehicle requirement	22
Route
Start	Deptford
Via	New Cross Elephant & Castle Westminster Oxford Circus
End	Marylebone
Length	8 miles (12 km)
Service
Level	24-hour service
Frequency	About every 7-8 minutes
Journey time	49-74 minutes
Night	24-hour service
Transport for London • Performance (PDF)

London Buses route 453 is a Transport for London contracted bus route in London, United Kingdom. The service is currently contracted to Selkent.

1 History
2 Current route
- 2.1 Route departing Deptford
- 2.2 Route departing Marylebone
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

The 453 was formed from London Buses route 53 on 15 February 2003, the weekend that the London congestion charge began.

The 453 operates from Deptford to Marylebone, with Citaro O530Gs, known as "Bendy buses", although standard double deckers had to be used for the first four weeks as Mercedes-Benz could not deliver enough in time.

The 453 has taken a lot of pressure off of the 53. The 453 originally started from the first really busy single stop on the 53, at Deptford, outside Addey and Stanhope School, then follows the 53 via New Cross, New Cross Gate, Old Kent Road, Bricklayers Arms, Elephant & Castle, St. George's Circus, Westminster, to Whitehall, then Regent Street, Oxford Street, Great Portland Street, Regent's Park and to Marylebone. The section north of Oxford Circus was a new service designed to create a new south - west link at Regent's Park Underground station.

The buses are based at Selkent's Plumstead garage, as is the 53, which is obviously a long way off route and results in a lot of empty running. An unfortunate situation arose because the originally planned terminus at Deptford’s Seager development (by the DLR station) was delayed for three years. As there was nowhere else suitable to turn the buses round, buses run empty all the way to and from Lewisham (Jerrard Street) to turn round and stand. This means 2 or 3 buses are tied up all day just running to and fro empty. Selkent proposed to extend the whole service to Catford garage, where the route would have been based.

This was the second of the "bendy bus" routes to operate out of Zone one (after the 436; the 507 and 521 were the first bendy buses, operating from the 5th of June 2002). In common with all bendy routes in London, it is a ticket less route - which is to say, tickets are not issued by the driver. Anecdotal evidence suggests that fare evasion rates are quite high despite more intensive ticket checking than normal, sometimes backed up by the Metropolitan Police stopping a whole bus and then checking everyone's tickets.

A surprising change from 15 January 2005 was the reduction of the Monday to Friday frequency from every 6 minutes to every 8 minutes, although there are a couple of extra peak hour journeys. This was mainly to free up 5 Citaros for route 25 for East London, which is even busier.

A large section of the route of the 453 parallels the Bakerloo line (Marylebone, Oxford Circus, Elephant and Castle etc.) and is very useful at times when the Bakerloo line is suspended due to engineering works.