Will Noble

How Many Tube And Bus Journeys Are Made In London Each Month?

There are over 543 trains tube trains running on the London Underground network at peak times. Image: Shutterstock

How many buses are there in London?

London Datastore says there are 9,142 buses operating in the capital, although TfL reckons that it's closer to 9,30o, across 675 routes. Along the way, these pass around 19,000 bus stops.

How many tube trains are there in London?

A graph of bus and tube journeys. Image: London Datastore

Over 543 trains run at peak times, according to TfL, across 402km of track, 11 lines and 270 stations.

How many people ride the bus and tube each month?

There are well over 9,000 buses on the network. Image: Shutterstock

If you asked the ordinary Londoner on the street, you'd guess more would prefer tube over bus. Yet buses are by far the more common way for Londoners to get about. Altogether, 176.8m bus journeys are made per month by bus (Nov-Dec 2019). That's in comparison to 117.5m trips on the tube (Nov-Dec 2019).

These stats do fluctuate a bit month-on-month, but the number of bus journeys invariably beat tube journeys by a fair whack. London's bus usage has declined in recent years, though, with TfL cutting some routes.

What about other public transport?

Image: London Datastore

In Nov-Dec 2019, 157m passengers took the Overground, 9.8m rode the DLR, 4.9m went on TfL Rail, and 2.3m used London's tram network.

And what's the least used type of public transport in London?

Spoiler alert: this is not London's most-used method of public transport. Image: TfL

That'd be the Emirates Airline. In Nov/Dec 2019 it clocked up just 80,000 passengers. You can hardly blame it: its capacity is waaaay below the tube and bus network. In the summer months, it (understandably) clocks up more passengers. In July/Aug 2019, Emirates Airline welcomed 140,000 passengers, which isn't bad. Though that doesn't come close to the 530,000 who rode it back in the heady July-Aug of 2012 (when the Olympics were also in full swing). The novelty has long worn off.