Route 309 was introduced in late 1993 between London Chest Hospital and the Aberfeldy Estate in Poplar via Stepney and Bow Common.
The Jubilee Line extension in 1999 saw a minor alteration to the routing in the Poplar area in order for the service to be diverted to the new bus station at Canning Town Station on the JLE. In order for buses to do this without the service to the Aberfeldy Estate having to be sacrificed a contraflow bus lane was installed in the Abbott Road underpass under the Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach
The contract was originally when it started with Stagecoach but re-tendering saw operation transfer to Firstgroup, whose base is just along the road from Stagecoach’s but is called Hackney rather than Stratford (Now West Ham). First had quite a few single deckers surplus following a spate of double deck conversions in west London, and so the 309 has used some of those, mainly native First Capital dual door 9.4m vehicles such as DM41791 seen at Canning Town terminus in Bethnal Green on 15th February 2012, one of the last days of First operation on the route.
More re-tendering saw the route pass to CT plus with some of the only Dual Door Solo's in the world the only other batch I can think of were some for Arriva in LHD form for work in the Netherlands. Anyway here is OS21.
And Just to show how weird they look here is a side view of OS23 which was actually delivered on the same day in the morning and made its way out on the route as soon as it was ready for service .
Now as all of the buses had not turned up for the 309 as Optare usually deliver buses late for many reasons CT plus had to use some from other routes so here is OS10 on the 309.
Source : http://alloverlondonbusblog.blogspot.com
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