Early Years

The First Bus Lanes and their Signage

The first bus lane was introduced in the UK on Vauxhall Bridge in February1968. It was followed in June 1968 by the first contraflow bus lane, a repurposed trolley-bus route in Reading. These routes all had bespoke signage, for which special permission was obtained from the Ministry of Transport.

The first regulations which made traffic signs relating to buses available for general use by local authorities was The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD) 1975. This consisted of a suite of signs and road markings which (with minor changes made in 1981) was:

At top left there is the No Entry sign. This was, of course, already available. What was new were the plates shown beside it: "Except buses" and "Except buses and coaches". These could be used beneath a No Entry sign to create bus-only access to a section of road. 

The signs are shown in numerical order of their diagram numbers. Among them is a bundle of signs and road markings for bus lanes:

• diagram 1048: BUS LANE road marking;

• diagram 1049: solid longitudinal line 250mm or 300mm wide at the outside edge of the lane;

and either:

• diagram 653: sign at the start of a contraflow bus lane; or

• diagram 654: sign at the start of a with-flow bus lane.

The bundling of diagrams 1048, 1049 and either 653 or 654 was implemented through General Directions 10 and 30(3). It required either all three to be used or none. 

The other road signs and markings:

• the warning sign (diagram 812.1) placed 30m before the start of the taper;

• the taper to the bus lane with a dashed thick white line (diagram 1010);

• the two deflection arrows (diagram 1010) placed 15m and 30m before the start of the bus lane;

• the markings for a left turn where the bus lane was interrupted (diagram 1050);

• the associated signs (diagram 812) showing that the inside lane is about to become bus-only or a bus lane

were not legally required but were strongly recommended in the Traffic Signs Manual.

One feature of the bundle was that diagram 654 for a with-flow bus lane showed a cycle as well as a bus; diagram 653 for a contraflow bus lane did not. This meant that, without obtaining special authorisation from the Department, highway authorities were obliged to allow cycles to use with-flow bus lanes.

The Origins of Bus Gates and Bus-only Streets

In the period before 1975, some local authorities implemented schemes involving buses without any special signage. There was a standard traffic sign which could be used to warn of a gate ahead. 

Gates themselves didn't need signs on them: wooden field gates were used across minor public roads in rural areas. In urban areas, gates were usually metal and had red-and-white stripes across the top rail. A No Entry sign might be fixed to the middle of a gate to make it more visible. When the gate was open, the No Entry sign was not visible to oncoming traffic, so did not apply. 

Where bridges and tunnels had tolls, there would be a toll plaza where the road split into lanes, each with a toll bar. This was usually a red-and-white striped pole which pivoted at one end (this is Dunham bridge near Lincoln in 2009):

Buses could be equipped with transmitters which would send a signal to open an electronically-operated gate. Such a gate was, for obvious reasons, known as a "bus gate". Local authorities could use such bus gates to create road schemes involving buses. 

After 1975, local authorities were able to use signs for buses without special permission. Some continued to install gates, supplementing them with signs; others used signs alone. 

Here is a view of a red-and-white-striped pole across a bus gate on Great Tower Street in the City of London in 2014:

Another use of bus gates in the 1970s and 1980s was as part of HGV restrictions. Some local authorities made these self-enforcing by using width restrictions. If a road was also a bus route, they had to provide a bypass for buses around the width restriction. 

The usual way they did this was to split the road into three physically-separated lanes using two traffic islands. Width-restricted lanes for cars and vans were at each edge; the central two-way lane was for buses:

The original traffic order for this site, at Headstone Lane, Harrow, specified that there was an electronically-operated rising barrier between the traffic islands, 

Bus-only streets tended to depend on signs and psychological measures such as narrowing of the carriageway and coloured surface-dressings.

Written 13th November 2025; last updated 16th November 2025