Local Bus Route Has London's Highest Number of Complaints

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Over 1,300 reports of poor service on number 65 over three years

The number 65 bus. Picture: Change.org

July 10, 2025

New data on the number of complaints by bus routes across London has shown that the highest number are received by route number 65.

The service between Ealing Broadway and Kingston has provided frustration for passengers for many years so the statistics confirm their experiences.

They were obtained by a Freedom of Information request by the Liberal Democrat Party which showed there were over 70,000 complaints lodged last year with Transport for London (TfL) .

Over three years there were 1340 complaints about the 65 with only one other route, the 111 which runs from Euston to Kingston, receiving over a thousand complaints. The 65 has been the most complained about bus in London for two of the last three years.

Five years of data were requested but TfL only retains information back for three years and so the figures are for each year since 17/6/2022. TfL cautions that simple comparisons between routes may not be ‘particularly insightful, due to differences in number of passengers, frequency or journey length. A request for the data on complaints broken down by borough was denied as that information is not collated.

Brentford and Isleworth MP Ruth Cadbury wrote to TfL this February to reflect her constituents’ concerns about the 65 route after a petition had been started to call for improvements.

In her letter she raised several problems with the bus including frequent early termination of Ealing-bound buses at the Great West Road in Brentford, a long wait for buses during peak times and a general lack of reliability to the service.

She asked TfL to consider whether the bus route could be broken up into two separate routes due to its longer than average length.

The route has experienced fluctuations in reliability over the years. In the late 2000s, specifically between September and December 2009, it was among the ten worst-performing routes, with an Excess Waiting Time (EWT) of 2.44 minutes, surpassing its minimum standard of 1.30 minutes. However, more recent data indicates some improvement and TfL responded to the letter saying performance had got better after a revised schedule was put in place.

A spokesperson for TfL said that the buses receiving the most complaints, including the 65, were also among the busiest on the network adding, "London's buses are the most used form of transport in the city and are vital in ensuring safe, reliable and accessible travel. They connect communities across the capital and help reduce congestion and emissions, with upwards of four million journeys per day.

"We're committed to ensuring every bus journey is a positive experience, and we continually address the small minority of customer complaints that we receive.

"This includes our work to bring in new routes as part of the Superloop network, reducing journey times by investing in bus priority measures and improving the customer experience by rolling out new zero-emissions buses with innovative features and cutting-edge design."

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