New interactive map shows London's busiest bus stops - and Waterloo doesn't even make the list

If you thought the tube was bad - we’re talking sardine packed Northern Line which is already overflowing by Clapham Common - then you’ll probably faint at the prospect of some of the buses.

If you grew up in a fairly rural area of England, buses were probably as rare as GP appointments, with one trundling along every couple of weeks, which no one ended up boarding out of pure suspicion or fear that they’d never get back. In London, it’s thankfully a dramatically different story, with buses actually being more popular than the tube. But, London is a city of extremes which usually means within a week you could be both the lone person waiting at a bus stop, and have battled against fifty others for a spot on the 159.

Now, there’s a new interactive map which shows exactly which London bus stops are the busiest so you either avoid them, or mentally prepare yourself for the bun fight which is boarding.

It has been created by journalist and travel expert Ed Jefferson. Named The London’s Busiest Bus Stops map, it allows you to search for any single stop in the city - and if you’re wondering how many that actually is, it’s around 19,000 stops across 700 routes.

Using 2024 TFL data, Jefferson revealed the number of passengers that boarded at each bus stop across the capital, mapping London’s 100 busiest stops. These were ranked by Jefferson, with the stops where the most passengers boarded buses daily coming in at the top spots.

Surprising absolutely no one who has attempted to travel from there, coming in at first place was Brixton Station, stop P, which saw 4.2 million passengers boarding buses in 2024, averaging 11,719 people per day. Another stop at Brixton station also landed in third place (stop Q) with 2,417,931 passengers annually - roughly 6,606 per day. Harrow-on-the-Hill, stop B came in second place although there was a marked gap between first and second place, as Harrow-on-the-Hill saw nearly two million fewer passengers a year than Brixton stop p. Also making the top five were Stratford, stop AP, and London Bridge, stop M.

All 10 of London’s most crowded stops were located by tube or train stations where passengers interchange for tube, DLR, Lizzie, or National Rail services. Suddenly, Sadiq’s £700 million Overground project seems very, very necessary.

London’s 10 busiest bus stops were:

1. Brixton Station, stop P
2. Harrow-on-the-Hill, stop B
3. Brixton Station, stop Q
4. Stratford, stop AP
5. London Bridge, stop M
6. Elephant & Castle / London Road, stop E
7. Marble Arch Station / Park Lane, stop R
8. Stratford, stop A
9. Barking Station, stop K
10. Heathrow Terminals 2 & 3, stop 19

You can find the map here.

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