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Remove "0" from from daveb07890 to reply
"Peter Smyth" wrote in message
...

"David B" wrote in message
...

twice in recent times ive been on a bus thats waited at a particular
stop
for up to 5 mins cos they were "ahead of schedule". the first time it
was
before the terminating stop, so i dont think it was for the benefit of
any
customers who may miss the bus.

is this normal, or is it a new policy? and should passengers accept
the
wait? this morning i coulda walked faster to the the station, and
would
have
if i knew the driver would delay.

If its ahead of schedule, and the driver says so, get off and walk to
the
next stop. With the congestion charge reducing traffic levels, buses can
and
do run ahead of schedule and being caught running early leads to being
disciplined. There was probably an inspector recording arrival times at
the
terminating stop. Early running can be avoided by waiting. Late running
can
be down to a variety of things.

Surely most buses in London (particularly in the congestion charge zone)
are
frequent enough that being early shouldn't matter. If a bus was every half
an
hour then it definitely shouldn't be allowed to leave early but when they
are
running every few minutes it doesn't make a difference whether a bus is
early
or not as most routes don't give full timetables anyway.

Peter Smyth

Each individual driver is running to a timetable he/she has which gives
precise times to pass certain points - the duty card. The inspectors book
also has these times. Timetables are necessary to prevent 'bunching' so
buses do actually come say, every 5 minutes instead of 6 buses in a row,
then nothing for half an hour. Of course due to traffic and other things
this seems to happen anyway