• THE overcrowding problems on the 274 bus are real. I have been writing to London Transport and then Transport for London for years about this.

The stretch which suffers this most is that between Camden Town and the Central London Mosque where there is no other transport whatsoever.

This stretch has passengers for the zoo, Lord’s Cricket Ground, and the mosque, plus Primrose Hill school.

Given it runs from the part of Oxford Street close to M&S, Selfridges, Primark and Next it is often pretty full when it’s halfway down Gloucester Place; certainly during the hours when workers return it can be full from the stop round the corner from Oxford Street.

If passengers disembark in Dorset Square it fills up again there so at following stops there can be more passengers than space; not all, if any, can embark.

At the stop on Regent’s Park Road towards Camden, it is usual not to be able to board not only the first but the second bus, when workers’ traffic is swelled by zoo visitors.

My heart sinks if I need to go to Camden for a bus connection from 5pm on, since I know I am unlikely to get on the bus.

This is perceived wisdom in the neighbourhood, as is the difficulty of using it on Fridays at those hours the mosque holds prayers, and whenever there’s a Test match or big game at Lord’s.

In the summer holidays families use it for the zoo; in term time whole classes fill it for the zoo.

If I alight at this stop in the early evening there are dozens of families with tired children who have walked round the zoo and the not inconsiderable distance to the bus stop, who can’t get on the bus, and have no hope of getting on following ones.

For years this service was a double-decker, the 74 from Camden to Roehampton Vale, then it became a single deck bus from Camden’s Greenland Street to Lancaster Gate, only relatively recently continuing to Islington.

We between the mosque and Parkway have nothing else. We need as many seats as possible on this, its most crowded stretch.

I cannot see how a double-decker bus causes more road jams or pollution or pushes cyclists on to pavements more than does a single-decker on the same road, (Keep the 274 as a single decker bus, August 16).

I’m afraid the intrusive argument would mean that no house-lined-road anywhere in the country would have double decker buses.

Perhaps the answer is to shorten the route and return its being Camden to Lancaster Gate as a double-decker then to run a different service of a single deck bus from Camden to the Angel.

It certainly seems that the needs of those beyond Camden towards the Angel are different from those on the route from Camden towards Lancaster Gate,

LORNA FOWLER
Address supplied