In message , at 16:19:00
on Thu, 3 Mar 2016, remarked:
Yup, bus fares would have to rise for everyone to cover the loss of
revenue from those taking two or more buses for their journey.

They would, but they would be much fairer, because people would not
get a discount for TfL providing a direct bus for their journey - or
rather people would not be penalised again for TfL not providing a
direct bus for their journey.

The current system is *incredibly* unfair. It near enough works in
small towns where most journeys are to/from the city centre on one
direct bus, and usually if your journey requires crossing the city
centre it's roughly twice as far so charging twice as much is not all
that unreasonable. London is too big for that to work.

It's just hit Cambridge where a route from the north, covering s string of
villages and the city has been cut back and no longer goes to the railway
station and hospital. There are plenty of buses its passengers can change
onto but no transfer fares unless they buy a day ticket.

But a day ticket is the same price as a return, isn't it? Are there a
lot of people making one-way trips.
--
Roland Perry

On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 17:37:24 -0000 (UTC)
Recliner wrote:
Jarle Hammen Knudsen wrote:
On Wed, 02 Mar 2016 23:27:16 +0000, Paul Corfield
wrote:

Will you get to see bendy buses on the streets of London again?

Doubtful and to be honest it's not important.
[...]
We need to get away from an obsession with vehicle types or some
aspect of them and concentrate on adding capacity where it is needed,

The environmental aspect is pretty important! Wouldn't running bendies
generate less polution for the same passenger capacity than using
double-deckers?

Why?

When both are full theres a greater number of passengers per unit mass of
the vehicle on a bendy. Hence more efficient.

--
Spud

On 2016-03-04 00:49:57 +0000, Paul Corfield said:

I appreciate you're going to support her policies but depending on the
scale of discount offered for a one hour ticket you are looking at
something like £70m pa cost.

It's not a "discount", and should not be thought of like that. It is
about charging a fair fare for a journey by TfL bus, which may well
include increases for those travelling by only one bus to make it
revenue neutral.

No different to when zones were abolished for buses.

Depending on where you make that sort of change you may
well get a riot on your hands especially if older people lose through
services where today they have one. The existence of a 1 hour ticket
is irrelevant to those people.

A public transport network does not allow selfishness to prevail. It
needs to be organised and charged for for the greater good.

Neil
--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the @ to reply.

On 2016-03-04 08:03:22 +0000, Roland Perry said:

But a day ticket is the same price as a return, isn't it? Are there a
lot of people making one-way trips.

Personally, my main bus use at the moment is home to station for a
multi-day trip. For a one day trip, I will mostly cycle, but cycling
with a trolley case or large rucksack is not wonderfully practical. To
go into town I'm probably more likely to drive but may also cycle. I
don't commute when not working away because I work from home, so that
is out.

In Cambridge I would expect that effect to be even larger with the
predominance of the bicycle.

Neil
--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the @ to reply.

On 03/03/2016 10:24, Neil Williams wrote:
On 2016-03-02 23:27:16 +0000, Paul Corfield said:

Unfortunately I think we are going to see the partial destruction of
Central London's bus network off the back of pedestrianising Oxford
St. All the candidates support it and believe Crossrail will be some
sort of cure all. They are wrong. It has also been reported that TfL
have apparently decided that Central London is no longer a priority
for investment so what money there is will go to the suburbs and
capacity will be lost in Zone 1. Oddly I can't recall where the
public were asked if they supported this fundamental change in policy.

I'm afraid I agree with the proposal - Oxford St is at times a horrible
place to be, and it would be much nicer if it was pedestrianised. I'd
cope with a tram running up and down every 5-10 minutes, but other than
that it is the epitome of the oppressive feel of much of London caused
by the predominance of large, often aggressively-driven vehicles. Though
I'd admit that builders' lorries are far worse.

Along similar lines, I don't get the Edinburgh hate for the tram network
idea (other than its appalling project mismanagement). Princes St is
oppressive with the number of buses running up and down it at all times
of day. I like Lothian as an operator, but it really isn't becoming of
a European capital city in 2016.

The implementation of Edinburgh Trams was a nightmare in the city centre
(even worse for Leith Walk as they had all the disruption of utilty
works but ended up with no tram service)

The whole thing was mired in partisan party-politics from the start -
it's political poison in Edinburgh now

We also seem to have bought the slowest trams on the planet. Compared
with trams I've experienced in Vienna, Prague, Darmstadt, Croydon and
Nottingham they tippy-toe through the city centre. This, combined with
their length (significanltly longer than say Croydon) means they can
cause a noticeable blocking and delay at junctions (although the popular
perception and reporting of this is wildly exaggerated)

Edinburgh's city centre road layout doesn't lend itself well to NOT
running almost everything along Princes Street or George Street.
The key routes into the city centre all converge at opposite ends of the
New Town. There are not many East-West and North-South through routes.
You could run more buses on George Street but I think you'd end up with
2 streets full of buses with poor interchange



I also, as you're aware, agree with the idea that the primary purpose of
buses should be to run outside central London taking people to/from
railway stations. I do accept that some parallel running is needed, but
that should be limited to where capacity on the rail network is inadequate.

I also don't like the "first and second class" nature of bus vs Tube. It
should be one fare set for a journey on TfL, regardless of what mode or
combinations thereof are used. If that causes certain groups economic
difficulties, then a concessionary scheme for travel on the whole
network, not just buses, needs to be looked at.

Neil

On Fri, 4 Mar 2016 11:23:06 +0000
Ian Cunningham wrote:
We also seem to have bought the slowest trams on the planet. Compared
with trams I've experienced in Vienna, Prague, Darmstadt, Croydon and
Nottingham they tippy-toe through the city centre. This, combined with

The "trams" (some rubber tyred guided abortion) in Clermont Ferrand in france
could probably give them a run for their money. They seem to go at barely
faster than a fast jogging pace in the outskirts then slow down to walking
pace in the city centre. Its the one city I've been to where I've thought
having buses would be a better option if only because they would do twice the
speed.

--
Spud

In article ,
(Neil Williams) wrote:

On 2016-03-03 22:19:00 +0000, said:

Since the point is to allow simpler routing by changing buses rather
than allow people to travel further that's hardly a problem. If people
want to travel more than an hour by bus it's not unreasonable to pay
more.

You've seen London traffic, right?

Since childhood in the 1950s. I was brought up in Putney and went to school
in Hammersmith. If traffic was bad enough to take me an hour to get home I
would walk, in the worst case all the way. It was quicker though wasn't like
that more than rarely.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Thu, 03 Mar 2016 16:19:01 -0600,
wrote:

In article ,
(Neil Williams) wrote:

On 2016-03-03 14:45:58 +0000, Mizter T said:

No need for that level of complexity - you already said it, "a
second touch-in free" - i.e. one free transfer - within a time
limit. No people 'restarting the clock' like that.

Why only one? I can change as many times as I wish on a Tube
journey. It is not out of the question that the quickest way to do a
particular journey may be three buses (though four is heading towards
the proverbial goat herding), or Tube-bus-bus or bus-Tube-bus or
whatever.

A single journey should be, like it is in Hamburg, a single journey.
No matter what you use to do it, it is one fare for a journey from
point A to point B.

Hence Caroline's proposal for a one hour bus ticket. Routes could be so
much simpler if changing buses wasn't penalised.

I appreciate you're going to support her policies but depending on the
scale of discount offered for a one hour ticket you are looking at
something like £70m pa cost. That's a lot of money when the bus
budget is likely to be savaged as a result of the revenue grant going.
I am also not aware that Caroline is proposing a related restructuing
of the bus network by removing through services and enforced
interchange. Depending on where you make that sort of change you may
well get a riot on your hands especially if older people lose through
services where today they have one. The existence of a 1 hour ticket
is irrelevant to those people.

There were so many more through services in my youth. Almost all the Putney
services I knew were split into at least two years ago. The splits were
presumably done for cost reasons. So doing so without penalising passengers
financially should save money in the end.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 2016-03-04 11:23:06 +0000, Ian Cunningham said:

We also seem to have bought the slowest trams on the planet. Compared
with trams I've experienced in Vienna, Prague, Darmstadt, Croydon and
Nottingham they tippy-toe through the city centre. This, combined with
their length (significanltly longer than say Croydon) means they can
cause a noticeable blocking and delay at junctions (although the
popular perception and reporting of this is wildly exaggerated)

They aren't exceptionally well designed vehicles at all, in my view -
the very short sections mean few sensibly arranged seats. But that's
slightly by the by, as vehicles can be replaced or have the seating
layout changed. But the very short sections with huge amounts of
length wasted on articulations seems to be a current tram fad. Not a
sensible one in my eyes.

As for speed, the junction priorities are poorly designed; it seems
they are always given their own phase, which is mostly completely
unnecessary. And pedestrians don't get a green during that phase
either even though on two of the crossings there is no conflict.

But that doesn't say "trams are bad", that says "Edinburgh has
implemented trams incompetently". It can be fixed, and the other UK
"new-generation" tram systems seem popular and effective, by and large.

Edinburgh's city centre road layout doesn't lend itself well to NOT
running almost everything along Princes Street or George Street.
The key routes into the city centre all converge at opposite ends of
the New Town. There are not many East-West and North-South through
routes.
You could run more buses on George Street but I think you'd end up with
2 streets full of buses with poor interchange

I did actually think it was more pleasant when everything ran on George
St, not that it was perfect. (I have spent two several-month chunks of
time working in Edinburgh, once very recently and one when the debacle
was first starting out). On the other hand, the main problem is not so
much the presence of the buses, it's more the continuous noise and
diesel fumes. Once all the buses can be electric, which will be viable
in maybe 5-10 years, they won't be any more or less pleasant than
trams. Which may actually count against further tram expansion.

Neil
--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the @ to reply.

In message , at 12:21:41 on
Fri, 4 Mar 2016, Paul Corfield remarked:

We are in the same situation as prevails with the concessionary pass -
spend millions on free travel with the consequence being that support
for the actual bus services cannot be funded so services get cut /
abolished forever. That's the economics of the mad house - I suspect
users would rather keep their services even if they had to pay a bit
more to do so.

There's a rural bus service where I live that the council is proposing
to ask passengers-with-twirly-cards to pay the fare one day a week, in
order to provide enough funding to keep it running at all.

On balance, I think this sort of "voluntary" tax is the thin end of a
wedge. Next we'll be asked to pay a "voluntary" £50 to visit the GP, and
so on. I suppose this sort of thing started a long time ago with the
museums going free, and subsequently twisting people's arms for a
contribution.
--
Roland Perry