Rerouting the B through Ebbsfleet Garden City
Yesterday
In August 2026, we re-routed the B through the busway running through the Ebbsfleet Garden City.
Ebbsfleet Garden City is one of the largest housing development projects in the UK. It has just passed the 5,000th house mark and another 10,000 are expected to be built. A 2,000 entry school has just been completed, with 2 year groups already attending and an additional one starting each year. Fastrack is at the centre of this community.
Every house in the development is designed to be within a ten-minute walk of a bus stop. Junctions in the development have bus priority treatments and next year an £25.5 million bus-only underpass will open connecting Ebbsfleet with Bluewater. The most central part of the development is the busway.
The busway is the most direct way to get across the development, cutting east to west directly, compared to the car routes which wind and most travel north to south. The busway was completed in August 2025, at which point we began operating the half-hourly E through the development.
The E showed strong patronage growth over the year, but was y constrained by its low frequency due to the ongoing construction worksIn August 2026, we rerouted the B from running along the A2 to going through the Ebbsfleet busway. We immediately saw and increase in patronage on the B. The E was combined with the F to create a new C route. We are hoping to see this increase on the Ebbsfleet corridor continue.
We’ve also seen an improvement in bus speeds. The busways allow the buses a traffic-free journey for over 10 minutes. This has multiple benefits, along with not having to sit in a ‘traffic jam’, the drivers also have less hazards to deal with, such as parked cars, meaning they can keep a steady speed. There is also less variation, meaning we can get the timetables more accurate, so the bus turns up on time.
Bus speed is increasingly part of the national conversation about buses, not just ‘easy fixes’ like fares. As London sees declining bus patronage along with declining bus speeds, Fastrack is seeing increasing patronage and increasing bus speeds.
We’re going to be working hard next year to speed up Fastrack, so our buses keep moving.