Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in
London. Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops
in London, there would be a division of bus routes into
'local' and 'express' bus routes.

Local routes would serve all currently designated bus stops,
but their range would be limited so that no journey was longer
than 5 miles. This would be to improve reliability - the
longer a bus route, the greater the chance that 'bunching'
will happen and the more the timetable is thrown out of
whack.

Express routes would serve specially designated stops (which
would be at major town centres - as an example, the 109 which
currently runs from Brixton to Croydon might stop at Brixton,
Streatham, Norbury, Thornton Heath and Croydon). The routes
would be longer distance routes, because the limited stops
would mean that the journey would be a lot faster.

Any comments?

--
Akin

aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Sky Fly wrote:

Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in London.
Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops in London, there
would be a division of bus routes into 'local' and 'express' bus routes.

Bloody good idea. However, i think it would need to be planned in concert
with the rail network; you wouldn't want to have express bus lines
duplicating the inherently fast rail lines. Perhaps the bus lines would
assume a more orbital configuration, moving people around within the
suburbs rather than in and out of the town centre (exactly like the
Brixton - Croydon route you describe). Although it would be very nice
indeed if there were express night bus services covering the rail
corridors.

Local routes would serve all currently designated bus stops, but their
range would be limited so that no journey was longer than 5 miles.

So the existing routes would be split into 5-mile chunks? I'm not sure of
the necessity of this, and the introduction of arbitrary breaks would make
certain short journeys (from one side of the break to the other) much
harder than at present.

This would be to improve reliability - the longer a bus route, the
greater the chance that 'bunching' will happen and the more the
timetable is thrown out of whack.

I'm not entirely convinced that bunching is unavoidable with long routes;
surely it could be beaten by better control systems? I'm thinking of
detecting that buses are close (which would mean tracking them by GPS or
GPRS triangulation) and instructing the back one to slow down a bit.

Express routes would serve specially designated stops (which would be at
major town centres - as an example, the 109 which currently runs from
Brixton to Croydon might stop at Brixton, Streatham, Norbury, Thornton
Heath and Croydon). The routes would be longer distance routes, because
the limited stops would mean that the journey would be a lot faster.

Also, these routes would have priority for bus lanes, traffic modulation
measures, better driver training, linking of traffic lights to the bus
control system, bendybuses, nicer bus shelters, etc. Also, because they
only need to get from point to point without stopping on the way, they can
make more use of fast, non-stoppable roads like clearways and such, which
should speed them up even further.

A twist on the scheme would be to have partial express services, along the
lines of the fast Metropolitan services; you might have something which
looked like Finsbury Park - Hackney - Stratford which stopped at all the
present 106 or 253/4 stops between FP and Hackney, but was then express
from Hackney to Stratford. I have no idea if that particular route would
be any use, but there might well be cases where that sort of thing would
be good.

Anyway, it'd be one in the eye for the fecking tram nazis!!!

tom

--
alle Menschen werden Brüder

Sky Fly wrote:
Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in
London. Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops
in London, there would be a division of bus routes into
'local' and 'express' bus routes.

Local routes would serve all currently designated bus stops,
but their range would be limited so that no journey was longer
than 5 miles. This would be to improve reliability - the
longer a bus route, the greater the chance that 'bunching'
will happen and the more the timetable is thrown out of
whack.

Express routes would serve specially designated stops (which
would be at major town centres - as an example, the 109 which
currently runs from Brixton to Croydon might stop at Brixton,
Streatham, Norbury, Thornton Heath and Croydon). The routes
would be longer distance routes, because the limited stops
would mean that the journey would be a lot faster.

Any comments?

It's a decent idea, and already runs on the Uxbridge Road as the 207/607
between Uxbridge and Shepherd's Bush - although to be replaced with the
West London Tram. I'm not sure whether they're going to retain the 607
(the express bus).

There's also the 726 express bus in South London and the X68 from
Russell Square out to Croydon.

When Jeffrey Archer was standing for Mayor, he had a plan to run a
series of orbital and radial express coach routes within London.

I think mixed services as proposed in Tom Anderson's post would be very
useful for inner London areas not served well by rail-based modes - for
example Hackney, Camberwell, Chelsea. Such services could serve all
stops until reaching a railhead, and then run fast from there - for
example, a Camberwell service might run all stops to Elephant & Castle,
and then London Bridge, City (say Monument station), Liverpool St.


--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

"Dave Arquati" wrote in message
...
Sky Fly wrote:
Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in
London. Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops
in London, there would be a division of bus routes into
'local' and 'express' bus routes.

Local routes would serve all currently designated bus stops,
but their range would be limited so that no journey was longer
than 5 miles. This would be to improve reliability - the
longer a bus route, the greater the chance that 'bunching'
will happen and the more the timetable is thrown out of
whack.

Express routes would serve specially designated stops (which
would be at major town centres - as an example, the 109 which
currently runs from Brixton to Croydon might stop at Brixton,
Streatham, Norbury, Thornton Heath and Croydon). The routes
would be longer distance routes, because the limited stops
would mean that the journey would be a lot faster.

Any comments?

It's a decent idea, and already runs on the Uxbridge Road as the 207/607
between Uxbridge and Shepherd's Bush - although to be replaced with the
West London Tram. I'm not sure whether they're going to retain the 607
(the express bus).

Do you know how effective/popular the 607 is? Knowing how an
existing express route works in practice will give a better
insight as to why this idea should/shouldn't be adopted.

There's also the 726 express bus in South London and the X68 from
Russell Square out to Croydon.

The X68 isn't quite what I had in mind - it's express from Russell
Square to West Norwood, whereas I'd be thinking of Russell Square -
Aldwych - Elephant - Camberwell - Herne Hill - Tulse Hill
- West Norwood - Whitehorse Road - Croydon. As to the 726, I
think that is *way* too long and too infrequent to be of
much use. If it ran from Heathrow to Croydon or Bromley to Sutton,
that might be better.

I think mixed services as proposed in Tom Anderson's post would be very
useful for inner London areas not served well by rail-based modes - for
example Hackney, Camberwell, Chelsea. Such services could serve all
stops until reaching a railhead, and then run fast from there - for
example, a Camberwell service might run all stops to Elephant & Castle,
and then London Bridge, City (say Monument station), Liverpool St.

Or they could just take a local route to the Elephant and use an
express route from there. I think the idea of having a clear
hierarchy of transport routes is important, because people could
easily get confused and not know whether a bus is going to stop
at a stop or not.

--
Akin

aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Dave Arquati wrote:

Sky Fly wrote:

Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in
London. Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops
in London, there would be a division of bus routes into
'local' and 'express' bus routes.

I think mixed services as proposed in Tom Anderson's post would be very
useful for inner London areas not served well by rail-based modes - for
example Hackney, Camberwell, Chelsea. Such services could serve all
stops until reaching a railhead, and then run fast from there

I think there's a flaw in this idea: these buses have to make up for the
lack of rail lines in those areas, and that means providing a fast inward
service; running all-stops to the railhead is utterly wrongheaded. Think
about it: the all-stops part would be no faster than catching a local, so
why not just catch a local to the railhead and a train from there? Rather,
the service has to run fast from the start to the railhead, along the
lines of the tram-busting services i vaguely alluded to in the recent
thread.

The more i think about it, the more i think my express plan isn't very
useful over this sort of scale. You either have to scale down the
Metropolitan scheme uniformly (which would mean running fast into local
centres - something like Northwold Road, Clapton, Linscott Road and then
fast to Hackney Central, which frankly seems quite silly, as it's only a
few minutes anyway), or maintain the scale and do something like
Walthamstow Central, the Leyton stops, the Lea Bridge Road stops and then
fast to Liverpool Street. The latter option might be useful, but i think
the uniform wannabe-tube plan (stopping only at Walthamstow Central,
Leyton, Clapton, Hackney, Shoreditch, Liverpool Street) would be better,
as it puts a useful service in reach of more people (where 'in reach of'
is basically not more than 10 minute's walk, which is about 500 m).
Perhaps the one case it would be useful is in a very Metroland-like
context, for example if you wanted to bring fast TfL connectivity to the
borough of Havering; you could have a bus that went express to various
points around Romford, and then busted it non-stop down to Liverpool
Street. Or something.

for example, a Camberwell service might run all stops to Elephant &
Castle, and then London Bridge, City (say Monument station), Liverpool
St.

Hey, that could be the other end of my local route - it would follow the
current route of the 48 from Walthamstow Central, all stops to Liverpool
Street via Leyton, Clapton, Hackney and Shoreditch. Or maybe it'd be fast
from Hackney (the first meaningful railway station).

tom

--
You are in a twisty maze of directories, all alike. In front of you is a broken pipe...

Sky Fly wrote:

"Dave Arquati" wrote in message
...

Sky Fly wrote:

Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in
London. Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops
in London, there would be a division of bus routes into
'local' and 'express' bus routes.

Local routes would serve all currently designated bus stops,
but their range would be limited so that no journey was longer
than 5 miles. This would be to improve reliability - the
longer a bus route, the greater the chance that 'bunching'
will happen and the more the timetable is thrown out of
whack.

Express routes would serve specially designated stops (which
would be at major town centres - as an example, the 109 which
currently runs from Brixton to Croydon might stop at Brixton,
Streatham, Norbury, Thornton Heath and Croydon). The routes
would be longer distance routes, because the limited stops
would mean that the journey would be a lot faster.

Any comments?

It's a decent idea, and already runs on the Uxbridge Road as the 207/607
between Uxbridge and Shepherd's Bush - although to be replaced with the
West London Tram. I'm not sure whether they're going to retain the 607
(the express bus).


Do you know how effective/popular the 607 is? Knowing how an
existing express route works in practice will give a better
insight as to why this idea should/shouldn't be adopted.


There's also the 726 express bus in South London and the X68 from
Russell Square out to Croydon.


The X68 isn't quite what I had in mind - it's express from Russell
Square to West Norwood, whereas I'd be thinking of Russell Square -
Aldwych - Elephant - Camberwell - Herne Hill - Tulse Hill
- West Norwood - Whitehorse Road - Croydon. As to the 726, I
think that is *way* too long and too infrequent to be of
much use. If it ran from Heathrow to Croydon or Bromley to Sutton,
that might be better.


I think mixed services as proposed in Tom Anderson's post would be very
useful for inner London areas not served well by rail-based modes - for
example Hackney, Camberwell, Chelsea. Such services could serve all
stops until reaching a railhead, and then run fast from there - for
example, a Camberwell service might run all stops to Elephant & Castle,
and then London Bridge, City (say Monument station), Liverpool St.


Or they could just take a local route to the Elephant and use an
express route from there. I think the idea of having a clear
hierarchy of transport routes is important, because people could
easily get confused and not know whether a bus is going to stop
at a stop or not.

If they were going to take a local route to the Elephant and change to
an express route, they might as well just change to the Underground. TfL
already have plans using Oyster Prepay for cheaper bus/tube transfers.

Having routes which run local in inner London and then express in
central London delivers price, time and convenience benefits to the
passenger in that they don't have to change.

I think confusion could be overcome by having clear branding.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

In article , Sky Fly
wrote:
Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in
London. Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops
in London, there would be a division of bus routes into
'local' and 'express' bus routes.

You could call the latter 'Green Line' g

--
Tony Bryer

"Sky Fly" wrote in message
...
Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in
London. Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops
in London, there would be a division of bus routes into
'local' and 'express' bus routes.

Local routes would serve all currently designated bus stops,
but their range would be limited so that no journey was longer
than 5 miles. This would be to improve reliability - the
longer a bus route, the greater the chance that 'bunching'
will happen and the more the timetable is thrown out of
whack.

Express routes would serve specially designated stops (which
would be at major town centres - as an example, the 109 which
currently runs from Brixton to Croydon might stop at Brixton,
Streatham, Norbury, Thornton Heath and Croydon). The routes
would be longer distance routes, because the limited stops
would mean that the journey would be a lot faster.

Any comments?

I run a Nat ex service out of London bound for the Kent Coast. There is
nothing in theory stopping people from purchasing tickets say from London to
Lewisham for which the journey time is between 32 and 40 minutes. This
represents the fastest available time by road using bus lanes. Is it a
worthwhile saving compared to using a bendibus 436 between the same two
places?

"Tony Bryer" wrote in message
...
In article , Sky Fly
wrote:
Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in
London. Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops
in London, there would be a division of bus routes into
'local' and 'express' bus routes.

You could call the latter 'Green Line' g

Yes, but GL services would be nowhere near as frequent/short
as the services I'm proposing.

--
Akin

aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Sky Fly wrote:

Here's an idea I thought about to improve bus services in London.
Instead of having all bus routes serve all bus stops in London, there
would be a division of bus routes into 'local' and 'express' bus routes.

Bloody good idea. However, i think it would need to be planned in concert
with the rail network; you wouldn't want to have express bus lines
duplicating the inherently fast rail lines. Perhaps the bus lines would
assume a more orbital configuration, moving people around within the
suburbs rather than in and out of the town centre (exactly like the
Brixton - Croydon route you describe). Although it would be very nice
indeed if there were express night bus services covering the rail
corridors.

Actually, I don't see any reason why you couldn't have the 'radial'
routes as well as the 'orbital' ones. Bus travel is cheaper and
much more frequent that rail services in some areas.

Local routes would serve all currently designated bus stops, but their
range would be limited so that no journey was longer than 5 miles.

So the existing routes would be split into 5-mile chunks? I'm not sure of
the necessity of this, and the introduction of arbitrary breaks would make
certain short journeys (from one side of the break to the other) much
harder than at present.

This could be the main problem - although I'm gambling that most
bus journeys rarely ever take place over the full route. Perhaps
we can have an informal survey here - typically, how long is your
busy journey measured by bus stops? If I'm right, then we can have
an existing 9 mile route split into two 6 mile local routes with a
3 mile overlap, with the hope that very few people will have
their journey 'broken up'.

This would be to improve reliability - the longer a bus route, the
greater the chance that 'bunching' will happen and the more the
timetable is thrown out of whack.

I'm not entirely convinced that bunching is unavoidable with long routes;
surely it could be beaten by better control systems? I'm thinking of
detecting that buses are close (which would mean tracking them by GPS or
GPRS triangulation) and instructing the back one to slow down a bit.

It isn't, but if the stops are limited, I think it would be
reduced. I'm sure you know that bunching happens when the bus
ahead stops to hoover up waiting passengers, and thus the
bus behind (which has no passengers to pick up) can catch
up with the bus ahead. So the fewer stops there are, the
less chance of bunching (especially if at the major stops,
there are always people waiting to be picked up so that the
bus coming from behind doesn't have the chance to catch up).

Express routes would serve specially designated stops (which would be at
major town centres - as an example, the 109 which currently runs from
Brixton to Croydon might stop at Brixton, Streatham, Norbury, Thornton
Heath and Croydon). The routes would be longer distance routes, because
the limited stops would mean that the journey would be a lot faster.

Also, these routes would have priority for bus lanes, traffic modulation
measures, better driver training, linking of traffic lights to the bus
control system, bendybuses, nicer bus shelters, etc. Also, because they
only need to get from point to point without stopping on the way, they can
make more use of fast, non-stoppable roads like clearways and such, which
should speed them up even further.

Agreed.

A twist on the scheme would be to have partial express services, along the
lines of the fast Metropolitan services; you might have something which
looked like Finsbury Park - Hackney - Stratford which stopped at all the
present 106 or 253/4 stops between FP and Hackney, but was then express
from Hackney to Stratford. I have no idea if that particular route would
be any use, but there might well be cases where that sort of thing would
be good.

I'm not really a fan of this - as I said in my reply to Dave
Arquati, I fear that it would confuse the passengers to have
to remember which part of the route is local and which is express
(and I *know* that confusion over bus routes is one thing that
drives many people away from using buses). I think it's simpler
for people to know that a route stops at several very prominent
stops, just like a railway route.