On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:57:05 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

Paul Terry wrote:
In message , David of Broadway
writes

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/cen_bus.pdf

That's more along the lines of what I'm looking for, although I'd like
to see a proper map, superimposed on a street map.

While I agree in principle, it would simply not be possible in central
London where there can be as many 15 routes (plus night buses) passing
along one street. Either the map would have to be enormous, or there
would have to be considerable topographical distortion to fit in the
number of differently coloured lines. The alternative is the style of
the quadrant maps which you say (and I agree) are not all that clear.

True. I was neglecting what might be termed the Oxford Street factor.
We don't have anything close to that in NYC.

I'd still be interested in seeing a London bus map in NYC style, but as
a practical matter it would probably be a dismal failure for this
reason. Oh well.

I think Oxford Street, Regent St and Park Lane would obliterate the rest
of Zone 1 on the map!

Interesting points.

If I might suggest some additional (though related) reasons:

Although London's rail network has pretty wide coverage, it has limited
capacity in comparison to NYC's. Our trains are wider and longer and
most of our major trunk lines (and some of the minor ones, too) have
four tracks. Given how crowded our trains get, if we had to give up our
express tracks and shorten and narrow the trains, the buses would become
a lot more popular, by necessity.

I'm a tad taken aback by your comments on the relative capacities of
London's rail network vs NYC's. Now I'm certainly not an expert on your
subway or rail network but surely your rail network (not subway) is but
a mere shadow of London's?

From memory PATH is only twin bore into both WTC (as was) and 33rd
Street. Metro North is twin bore into Grand Central or is that 4 tracks?

I think that LIRR and NJT into Penn Station is 4 tracks under the river.
Now OK some of your trains are pretty long but overall frequencies and
distances covered are nothing like the density of service that we have
on networks like Southern, South West Trains or One from Liverpool
Street. I've observed Grand Central and Penn Stations in the rush hour
and certainly large volumes of people are shifted but it didn't feel on
the same scale as London's main line networks.

I confess I don't know how many people are carried on LIRR lines that
terminate in Queens and Brooklyn.

On the subway you do have much longer and bigger profile (than our tube
stock) trains and the benefit of express lines. In my (albeit limited)
experience of the NYC rush hour you get pretty high frequencies on
common sections of route served by multiple services but if you want a
particular letter / number then frequency drops noticeably compared to
almost all of London's tube service pattern.

I'm interested to get your feedback on what I've not noticed about NYC's
trains compared to ours here in London.

Fully accept the point that if the subways weren't there then people
would need to use the bus system.

Also, most NYC neighborhoods not near the subway developed in the
automotive age. Most people in those neighborhoods use their cars for
all of their trips except into Manhattan. In those neighborhoods, the
only major demand for bus service is to the nearest subway station.
(And to nearby schools.) From what I've read here, London has a lot of
local travel by bus outside the central area.

I think we're sort of back with history here in that the rail and subway
networks are typically strongly radial links with little local traffic
(relative to flows into the centre) and virtually nothing offered for
orbital flows. Buses have always had a strong purpose given those gaps
in the rail network.

In older times when we had less congestion many bus routes were very
much longer than today and lengthy radial journeys were also possible
into the suburbs or across the central area. Sadly this is now
relatively rare with few radial routes stretching from Zone 1 to beyond
Zone 2. There are more longer radial routes in South London that North
of the river - probably reflecting the influence of the tube network
north of the Thames.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!