When the Alder Line extended its last bus from 23:15 to half past midnight, planners expected a modest rise in weekend revenge-of-the-nightclub traffic. Instead, the busiest new departure has been the 00:10 on a Wednesday.
“We built the pilot around a picture of who travels late,” said the operator’s planning lead. “The data described somebody else: hospital porters, kitchen staff, people finishing a second job.” Nearly half of late boardings began or ended at a workplace, not a venue.
A network with a different shape
Night services tend to be treated as a leisure amenity, funded reluctantly and cut first. The pilot suggests they function more like a safety net: a way for people on irregular shifts to take work they could not otherwise reach. Three employers have already asked whether they can co-fund a fourth route.
The pilot ends in March. The operator says the evidence is strong enough to propose making the later timetable permanent, though it admits the arithmetic remains tight. “A bus that is full of people finishing work is exactly the one we should be able to afford,” the planning lead said. “We have to prove it.”
