Four times in almost every hour from 3.22 in the morning till nearly 11.30 at night a 555 bus makes its way through Shepperton in one direction or another. It’s a familiar sight to everyone in the village, and we hope it remains so. However it, and Shepperton’s other main bus routes are new under threat as bus company Abellio seeks to reduce losses following County Council funding cuts.
The 555 links us with Sunbury, Ashford, Stanwell, and Heathrow. For many it’s an essential public transport link for school, shopping at Tesco, getting to Ashford Hospital or working or flying from Heathrow.
But despite being such an established part of our local scene, the 555 is a comparative newcomer. It started just 30 years ago, on Monday 27 October 1986. Before that Shepperton had no direct public transport link with Heathrow.
Bus services went through a massive shake up in 1986. Outside London, they were freed of the licensing system that governed them and state-owned bus companies were sold off. Little remembered now, it was to affect far more people’s lives than Dr Beeching’s more famous reforms of the railway did.
Where local authorities could see gaps in the bus service they could devise a bus route and ask bus companies to bid to run it.
Surrey County Council drew up a bus route from Walton station to Heathrow, via two slightly different routes, and a third starting at Chertsey. The company which won the bid to run what was then an hourly service, Thandi Coaches from Warley in the West Midlands, was a surprising one.
It’s fair to say it was a rather shambolic operation, and a couple of years later the contract passed to Armchair Coaches from Brentford. Armchair brought a new professionalism to running the service, though their name — the single word Armchair painted in big letters on their smart little orange and white buses — looked rather strange! It made you wonder if there were other buses out on the road with ‘Sofa’ or ‘Wardrobe’ painted on them.
Big improvements came to the 555 as Heathrow sought planning permission for Terminal 5. A great public transport hub was promised and no widening of the M25 would be needed. Under the banner of Freeflow Heathrow, money was poured into local bus services to create better links for airport staff and passengers. The 555 benefitted from brand new, air-conditioned buses in a smart blue colour scheme running every 15 minutes.
Sadly the great promise of a new public transport hub vanished when Terminal 5 was built, the money for bus services dried up, and the M25 got widened. Nonetheless the 555, back to every half-hour and with more basic buses, plods on its merry way, at least for now. Such is the way of privatisation, it’s now run by Abellio, the trading name of the Dutch state railway. Despite the loss of Heathrow’s financial support and huge budget cuts by Surrey County Council it remains a vital lifeline to many local people, who must wonder now what they would have done 30 years ago when the 555 just didn’t exist. Sadly, unless something is done quickly to rescue it, they may find out sooner rather than later.
By Stephen Morris