Barnet bus strikes: five routes hit on 15 days from 14 Aug

Five bus routes that run through Barnet will have little or no service on 15 separate days between Friday 14 August and Monday 19 October, under strike action set out in Transport for London’s own strike notice.

TfL says strikes are planned on some Arriva London North bus services and lists 43 routes across north, east and central London that will be disrupted. Five of those routes serve Barnet: the 34, the 102, the 221, the 307 and the Superloop SL1. The first strike day is Friday 14 August.

The notice is worded conditionally, “if they go ahead”, so the action can still be called off. The wording TfL uses for the days themselves is not conditional: “On these dates, little or no service is expected on affected routes.”

Every strike date, in full

TfL lists 11 blocks of action, each running from 04:00 on the first date to 04:30 the following morning. Read as ordinary days, that gives 15 full days without a service:

• August: Friday 14; Tuesday 18, Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20; Tuesday 25, Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27
• September: Friday 4; Monday 7; Friday 18; Monday 21
• October: Friday 2; Monday 5; Friday 16; Monday 19

Two things follow from the 04:00 to 04:30 pattern. Night buses running the night before a strike begins are not affected: TfL says that “on the night before strike action starts, affected night services will operate as normal”. And the strike ends at 04:30 rather than at midnight, so the first services of the following morning are also caught.

None of the four night routes on TfL’s list, the N19, N29, N41 and N279, run in Barnet, so the borough’s night bus network is not directly hit.

The five Barnet routes, and who they carry

We checked every route on TfL’s list against TfL’s published route data and mapped each stop to its local authority. Five routes have stops inside the London Borough of Barnet.

221 (Edgware Bus Station to Turnpike Lane). The most Barnet-heavy service on the list by some distance: 80 of its 116 stops sit inside the borough. It links Edgware Station, Mill Hill Broadway, Barnet Copthall Leisure Centre, Mill Hill East, Woodside Park, Tally Ho Corner and North Finchley Bus Station, Woodhouse College and Colney Hatch Lane before leaving the borough at New Southgate.

102 (Brent Cross Shopping Centre to Edmonton Green). 59 of its 126 stops are in Barnet. It is the cross-borough link through East Finchley, Market Place, Hampstead Garden Suburb, Temple Fortune, Golders Green Station and Hendon Way, terminating at Brent Cross.

34 (Barnet Church to Walthamstow Central). 41 of 108 stops in Barnet. It starts on Barnet High Street, calls at High Barnet Station, Barnet Everyman Cinema, Lyonsdown Road, Whetstone High Road and Myddelton Park, then runs on through Friern Barnet.

307 (Barnet Hospital to Brimsdown). 38 of 90 stops in Barnet, and the one with the sharpest consequence: Barnet Hospital is its western terminus. It is the only route linking the hospital directly with Cockfosters Road, East Barnet Village, New Barnet Sainsbury’s and New Barnet Station, then on through Barnet Everyman Cinema, High Barnet Station, Barnet Church and Union Street.

SL1 (North Finchley to Walthamstow Central). The Superloop express starts at North Finchley Bus Station and calls at North Finchley High Road, Friern Barnet Lane and New Southgate before leaving the borough. It is the fast route east, and it has the fewest stops to lose.

What still runs

Most Barnet corridors keep a service, because the struck routes share their roads with operators not involved in this dispute. Checked against TfL’s stop data on 13 August, none of the following appear on the strike list:

• High Barnet and Barnet Church: 107, 184, 234, 263, 326, 383, 384, 389, 606, 626, 634 and the N20
• New Barnet Station: 107, 184, 326, 383, 384, 626
• North Finchley: 112, 125, 134, 263, 383, 626, 683, N20, N263
• Totteridge and Whetstone: 234, 251, 263, 326, 626, 628, 634, 688, N20
• East Finchley: 143, 234, 263, 603, H3, N20, N263
• Golders Green: 13, 83, 183, 210, 240, 245, 260, 268, 328, 460, H2, H3, N5, N83
• Brent Cross: 112, 142, 143, 182, 186, 189, 210, 232, 266, 324, 326, C11
• Edgware: 32, 79, 107, 113, 142, 186, 204, 240, 251, 288, 292, 303, 340, 384, 688
• Mill Hill Broadway: 114, 186, 240, 251, 302, 303, 628, 642, 688

The strike notice covers buses only. The Northern line’s High Barnet and Edgware branches and Thameslink at Mill Hill Broadway and Hendon are not part of it, though TfL warns that “other local bus, Tube and rail services in these parts of London may be busier than usual” and advises allowing more time.

What it means for you

If you visit Barnet Hospital by bus, the 307 is the one to check, because the hospital is its terminus. It is not the only bus there: the stops at Barnet Hospital and Barnet Hospital / Queens Road are also served by the 107, 263, 384, 606, 634 and the N20, and none of those is on TfL’s strike list. The loss is the direct link from New Barnet, East Barnet Village and Cockfosters Road, which the 307 alone provides.

If you travel from Mill Hill, Edgware or Woodside Park, the 221 is the route that disappears, and it is the one with the fewest like-for-like substitutes along its middle section between Mill Hill East and Woodside Park. Mill Hill Broadway keeps the 114, 186, 240, 251, 302, 303, 628, 642 and 688, and Thameslink runs from the same station.

If your journey is a school run, the August dates fall in the summer holidays, but seven of the 15 strike days come on or after Monday 7 September, once the school year is under way: 7, 18 and 21 September, then 2, 5, 16 and 19 October.

Before you travel, check the live position rather than this list: strike dates are regularly called off when a dispute settles, and TfL publishes the current position on its strikes page and its bus status updates. If you are driving instead, our page on roadworks and travel in Barnet covers what else is disrupting journeys, and Barnet train times to London sets out the rail alternatives from each part of the borough.

What we are not reporting

TfL’s notice names the operator and the dates but gives no reason for the dispute. We have not been able to reach a first-hand statement from either side: the union’s website is behind a challenge page that blocks automated reading, TfL has issued no press release on it, and Arriva’s public site does not cover its London contracts. Rather than repeat another outlet’s account of what the dispute is about, we are leaving that out until we can source it directly, and we will update this page when we can.