As if getting home after giving your organs and feet a hammering weren’t hard enough, there’s the night bus to endure. For the most part, you’re forced to suffer the indignity of standing but when you finally do get a seat, the relief is cut short. A vomit-stained 16-year-old and group of jeering numbskulls sat close by put stop to that. The best you can do is avoid going out, or at least avoid getting on one of the busses named and shamed in a recent survey.
Congratulations N262, you are London’s worst night bus. One fifth of the 500 people questioned by taxi firm Kabbee named the Stratford to Beckton bus as their least favourite way of getting home, with the 152 from Pollards Hill to New Malden taking a sheepish second place. Fellow Londoners cited disorderly behaviour, fighting, smelly fast food and drunken shouting as their main causes for complaint. The full list is below.
Revealing the scummier side of late night public transport clearly works in Kabbee’s favour, but they aren’t alone in their findings. A study in 2010 by London Travel Watch discovered much the same, with route 262 again topping the list. Pull your socks up, 262! Let someone else take the accolade in 2018. How could one of these routes, for example, not be recognised for their disgrace?
1) N159
The N159 runs from Marble Arch to New Adlington, handily picking up revellers from Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Brixton and Croydon along the way. It ostensibly provides a tour of London’s most depressing nightspots, packed with Vodka Revs champions and night shift commuters pouring out of the Café de Paris.
2) N155
Travelling from Aldwych to Morden, the N155 bus route is like something out of a Tolkien novel. The bus stops near Infernos in Clapham, the Mordor of London and not just because of its fiery name. Infernos is the home of shit fancy dress. Morph suits, angel wings, leg warmers, cat noses… Infernos has it all. A bus ride home from Infernos is like a travelling circus, with all the characters combined into one. As you weave your way through the dark streets of South London, strongmen wearing tutus swing from the rafters, downing WKDs as they go.
3) N73
They used to call the 73 the seventy-free back when it was a bendy bus, back when it had charm. Now it’s just a bit of a drip. Well, a lot of drips. You can’t walk round any corner in north London without bumping into a 73. After dark, it's full of the strangest mix of people. Even on a Friday at three in the morning, there’s an old lady with a shopping trolley and a man in a pinstripe shirt coming home from work.
4) N55
There’s only so many five-panel caps one person can stand. You'll learn this if you get on the N55. The bus runs from Oxford Circus to Leyton, and while the first part of the journey can be exhausting, it’s less of a bother than what awaits between Old Street and Clapton. What used to be a relatively fuss-free journey has descended into a Saturday night student party bus, bring your own booze, lock in after hours. You can tell the unsuspecting victims of the N55 from a distance. They’re the ones with their faces pressed pleadingly against the steamed up glass.
Follow Amelia on Twitter @ameliaephillips
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.