London Buses route 405

London Buses route 405 was one of the cross-border country areas, and ran from Crawley to Croydon, but was cut back in 2000 to Redhill, a more localised route taking over south of there. This might seem a retrograde step, but the route runs parallel with — and indeed almost entirely less than a mile from — the London – Brighton line, so is really more a device for local travel than the trunk route you may think at first glance.

When Arriva wanted to pull out the route commercially, London Buses evidently felt it was important enough to Londoners to take responsibility for funding it, though no doubt gets some money from Surrey for its trouble. Due to the short notice it was decided to issue a temporary tender, giving London Buses a chance to taker a longer term view on what the route required. It awarded short term contract to Connex from 21 April 2001, which ironically ran (at the time) the parallel rail services. It used Dennis Dart SLFs before passing to Metrobus on 30 August 2003.