London Banter - View Single Post

Tim Roll-Pickering · January 16th 12, 06:40 PM posted to uk.transport.london

d wrote:

But bendy buses weren't restricted to cental london. Some routes went
out
into the burbs where you'll find a lot of HGVs. So what was the
rationale
in getting rid of them from there?

Because a bus primarily designed for fast rapid trips at airports and in
city centres is not automatically suitable for longer journeys across the
suburbs. The bendies had an official capacity (as printed on the signs by

Who said it was only designed for rapid trips and city centres? Because
the
standing to seating ratio is high? So what, its high in plenty of metro
trains
too.

Metro trains tend to be faster and/or have a turnover such that it's easier
for the longer distance traveller to get a seat for at least some of the
journey.

the driver's cab) that was about 50% more than they could hold in
practice,
and they had limited seats and space to safely store the likes of
supermarket shopping. When you have long journeys seats are invariably
more

And you think in a double decker there is space to store shopping? Where?

Speaking personally I find it much easier to store the bags on myself and
the foot area on a seat on a doubledecker then carrying them in the crush
crowded vestibule of the bendy. Even when standing on a double decker the
passenger flow is such that in most areas you don't get the crushed from all
sides that you do on bedies.

desirable than a bus rampacked with standing room only crush crowded
because
the route has had its de facto capacity cut despite official figures
saying
it is sufficient. Furthermore the "free bus" aspect was particular
disliked

Standing is better than no bus at all. The number of times I've seen
packed
double deckers that couldn't let anymore people on I've lost count of.

I've seen them too. I've also seen the phenomenon far more often with
bendies.

And
if you think standing in a bendy bus is bad trying standing on the
staircase
of a double decker with a driver who thinks he's Schumacher.

Par the course if you try standing there for the long run.

because many passengers felt it brought extra problems to the route - and
it
was hard to persuade people the bendies weren't "free" when ticket checks
were rare, especially outside zone 1, and a person who didn't mind the
stigma of being occasionally fined would be significantly better off
because
the fines never approached regular usage (plus with readers spread across
the bus one could always tap their Oyster onto one if they did get wind of
an inspection).

Irrelevant. Thats an issue with inspection , it has nothing to do with the
bus.

On the contrary it was one of the main reasons the buses failed to catch
people's affections. The limited number of inspections and, even more so,
their limited geographic concentration meant that both customers and fare
dodgers came away with the impression that it was a free bus, and that this
was contributing to its crush crowding, especially when compared to
doubledeckers that ran in parrallel for part of the route, and the high
number of undesirable incidents on it.

Using that logic you should close the whole of the DLR since it has
very few physical ticket barriers and the train captains rarely inspect
everyones tickets in rush hour.

DLR is a little too freely open I'll admit but ticket inspections on there
are far more frequent than they were on bendies, plus the Oyster
arrangements are critically different - you can't verify on the vehicle
itself and you have to touch at both ends to avoid being overcharged, and
can't be certain you won't run into a check at either end or onboard. But
the critical factor is less the level of open accessibility of the system
itself than whether there are perceived problems consequential to that level
of open accessibility.