Councillors have refused £50,000 of design work to speed up the SL7 and 285 through Hampton and Teddington. The plan had included talks with TfL on SL7 stops in Hampton.
Richmond councillors have refused plans to speed up the SL7 Superloop and the 285 through Hampton, Hampton Hill and Teddington.
Updated 10 November, evening: the committee’s decision was published after this story first went out. It has been rewritten to lead on the refusal.
The council’s Transport and Air Quality Committee met on Monday 9 November. Its decision notice, published on 10 November, says it “RESOLVED to REFUSE the recommendations contained in the officer’s report”. The status is recorded as “Refused”.
The notice gives no reason, and the minutes are not out yet. We will add the reasons when the council publishes them.
The SL7 runs between West Croydon and Heathrow, and it stops just once in the borough, at a pair of stops in Broad Street, Teddington. Everywhere else in Hampton and Teddington it passes straight through.
The officers’ report had asked the committee to approve design work on bus priority measures. It also asked for officers to open talks with Transport for London (TfL) about extra SL7 stops “at locations to be agreed”. The committee refused all of the recommendations, so neither goes ahead on the strength of this report.
What was proposed
The budget would have been £50,000, paid for by a TfL grant. It would have covered design work, not construction. The report listed three schemes:
- A312 Uxbridge Road (Hampton) and A313 Park Road (Hampton Hill and Teddington), between Uxbridge Road and Queens Road: a feasibility design for kerbside waiting and loading restrictions
- A313 Ferry Road, Teddington: a wider pavement at the Kingston-bound stop, with changes to waiting and loading rules on the other side of the road
- A309 Park Road, Teddington: waiting and loading controls to help buses get round the pedestrian islands
It also covered detailed design and traffic surveys for banned turns at the A311 High Street and A313 Hampton Road/Park Road signals, to ease queues on the approaches.
The report says the measures most likely to work in an outer borough are:
- longer hours or more days for existing bus lanes
- new or longer waiting and loading restrictions at the kerb
- traffic signals that give buses a “hurry-up” call at junctions
Any new restrictions would have gone out to statutory public consultation before a decision.
How slow are the buses?
TfL’s figures in the report give average speeds across each whole route:
| Route | Passengers 2024/25 | Average speed |
|---|---|---|
| SL7 | 3,898,504 | 12.31mph |
| 285 | 3,930,876 | 10.34mph |
| N285 | 163,566 | 16.04mph |
The study also covers the 285 and its night service, which use the same roads. The SL7 and 285 together carried almost 7.8 million passengers in 2024/25.
What it means for you
For drivers and residents on Uxbridge Road, Park Road and Ferry Road, nothing changes. The refusal means no design work on new yellow lines, loading bans or banned turns under this report.
For SL7 passengers, the buses keep running as now. TfL, not the council, runs the route and decides where it stops. The report had said the council “is lobbying TfL for additional stops in Hampton/Hampton Hill”. A separate bus stop audit at the same meeting noted the request for a stop in Hampton Hill or Fulwell.
Current closures are on our Richmond roadworks page.
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