I've had an idea!

A map of London - could be geographical, could be a Beckian diagram -
showing where the bus hubs are. By 'bus hubs', i mean places that have a
spider map centred on them. The point of this is that if you're somewhere,
and you want to figure out how to get somewhere else by bus, you can use
this map to figure out which spider map you want.

At the moment, there's no way to do this except local knowledge. For
instance, friday after next, i'll want to get from NW1 3EE to NW1 7AY. I
can plug this into the journey planner, and that's great, but i want a
spider map for the starting end, so i can instantly see what bus lines go
where, where i can catch them from, where else i might be able to go, etc.
I guess the destination is Camden Town, but is the start also that?
Warren Street? Mornington Crescent? Euston?

Brilliant or what? Has this been done?

tom

--
I see large and small words on this page, arranged in long rows separated by little dotty characters. Suspect written by little dotty characters, too. -- RonJeffries

Tom Anderson wrote:
I've had an idea!

A map of London - could be geographical, could be a Beckian diagram -
showing where the bus hubs are. By 'bus hubs', i mean places that
have a spider map centred on them. The point of this is that if
you're somewhere, and you want to figure out how to get somewhere
else by bus, you can use this map to figure out which spider map you
want.

At the moment, there's no way to do this except local knowledge. For
instance, friday after next, i'll want to get from NW1 3EE to NW1
7AY. I can plug this into the journey planner, and that's great, but
i want a spider map for the starting end, so i can instantly see what
bus lines go where, where i can catch them from, where else i might
be able to go, etc. I guess the destination is Camden Town, but is
the start also that? Warren Street? Mornington Crescent? Euston?

Brilliant or what? Has this been done?


Do you mean something a bit like this
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/spiders/pdf/hydepark.pdf ?

On Wed, 04 May 2005 18:17:56 GMT, "Brimstone"
wrote:

Do you mean something a bit like this
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/spiders/pdf/hydepark.pdf ?

I think the OP is after a map of key nodes (and possibly of trunk
rail/bus routes connecting them?) without the "spider" bit.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

Tom Anderson wrote:
I've had an idea!

A map of London - could be geographical, could be a Beckian diagram -
showing where the bus hubs are. By 'bus hubs', i mean places that have a
spider map centred on them. The point of this is that if you're somewhere,
and you want to figure out how to get somewhere else by bus, you can use
this map to figure out which spider map you want.

At the moment, there's no way to do this except local knowledge. For
instance, friday after next, i'll want to get from NW1 3EE to NW1 7AY. I
can plug this into the journey planner, and that's great, but i want a
spider map for the starting end, so i can instantly see what bus lines go
where, where i can catch them from, where else i might be able to go, etc.
I guess the destination is Camden Town, but is the start also that?
Warren Street? Mornington Crescent? Euston?

Brilliant or what? Has this been done?

I was thinking of something similar just a day or two ago. I wondered
whether it would be useful/possible to dynamically generate overlap
spider maps - i.e. enter one place (e.g. Waterloo), enter another place
(e.g. Liverpool St) and display a joint spider map, with the small box
for the detail of the two specified locations, along with the
diagrammatic representations for the routes in between the locations.
You'd then very easily be able to see how the routes from the two
locations interacted - which helps with interchange points.

You could extend this to multiple bus nodes - i.e. the current
geographic bus map, but with geographical info only at the nodes, and
diagrammatic info in between. The problem with that is that it might
make it difficult to see detail.

The main problem with the geographical bus map is that although it's
easy to see which routes pass near a location, it's hard to follow
routes along the map, and very difficult to work out journeys requiring
a change of bus.

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

On Wed, 04 May 2005 21:06:13 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:

The main problem with the geographical bus map is that although it's
easy to see which routes pass near a location, it's hard to follow
routes along the map, and very difficult to work out journeys requiring
a change of bus.

Perhaps what is needed is a combination of the two, with bus routes
laid on top of the tube map, or a Tube-style diagrammatic route map of
the key routes with "hubs" marked and the appropriate spider maps for
those "hubs" on the back?

These are interesting ideas, too:-
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/MetroPlan.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/schnellbus.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/eilbus.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/bilder/plaene/nachtbus.gif

Look a bit odd, as they're not to scale, but a very useful map
nonetheless. One showing London's key night buses on top of the
"London Connections" map might be an idea.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

Neil Williams wrote:
On Wed, 04 May 2005 21:06:13 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:

The main problem with the geographical bus map is that although it's

easy to see which routes pass near a location, it's hard to follow
routes along the map, and very difficult to work out journeys
requiring
a change of bus.

Perhaps what is needed is a combination of the two, with bus routes
laid on top of the tube map, or a Tube-style diagrammatic route map
of
the key routes with "hubs" marked and the appropriate spider maps for
those "hubs" on the back?

There is actually a one-off spider map like that, which just shows
routes of tourist interest in the City and West End. I'm not sure if
it's on the tfl website as the only place I've seen it is inside the
"Planning your day out" (or something) leaflet. It combines a
spider-type (i.e. non-geographical) map with line drawings of places of
interest. Unfortunately it is already pretty complicated, yet only
shows major routes, which suggests that an 'all-London' map would have
to be massive scale to work!


These are interesting ideas, too:-
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/MetroPlan.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/schnellbus.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/eilbus.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/bilder/plaene/nachtbus.gif

Indeed. I'm also very keen on the French-style semi-geographic bus maps
(as also used in Stockholm), such as:

http://www.tcar.fr/ftp/FR_plan/plan_reseau.pdf

though this gets very messy in the central area, and I can't imagine
how it would work somewhere like Oxford Circus or Aldwych!

Rupert Candy wrote:
Neil Williams wrote:

On Wed, 04 May 2005 21:06:13 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:


The main problem with the geographical bus map is that although it's
easy to see which routes pass near a location, it's hard to follow
routes along the map, and very difficult to work out journeys requiring
a change of bus.

Perhaps what is needed is a combination of the two, with bus routes
laid on top of the tube map, or a Tube-style diagrammatic route map of
the key routes with "hubs" marked and the appropriate spider maps for
those "hubs" on the back?

There is actually a one-off spider map like that, which just shows
routes of tourist interest in the City and West End. I'm not sure if
it's on the tfl website as the only place I've seen it is inside the
"Planning your day out" (or something) leaflet. It combines a
spider-type (i.e. non-geographical) map with line drawings of places of
interest. Unfortunately it is already pretty complicated, yet only
shows major routes, which suggests that an 'all-London' map would have
to be massive scale to work!

Yeah, I've seen that map too; unfortunately it is a bit complicated.

These are interesting ideas, too:-
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/MetroPlan.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/schnellbus.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/pdf/eilbus.pdf
http://www.hvv.de/bilder/plaene/nachtbus.gif

I'm not too keen on those for London; useful for making connections
between metro and bus, but in London, the more extensive Tube network
makes such connections useful in particular locations, where a spider
map is more handy.

Indeed. I'm also very keen on the French-style semi-geographic bus maps
(as also used in Stockholm), such as:

http://www.tcar.fr/ftp/FR_plan/plan_reseau.pdf

though this gets very messy in the central area, and I can't imagine
how it would work somewhere like Oxford Circus or Aldwych!

I quite like that style, but you're right about the problem with busy
locations. It could work well for outer locations though.

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

On 5 May 2005 03:05:54 -0700, "Rupert Candy"
wrote:

Indeed. I'm also very keen on the French-style semi-geographic bus maps
(as also used in Stockholm), such as:

http://www.tcar.fr/ftp/FR_plan/plan_reseau.pdf

Milton Keynes Council issue one of these (probably done using the same
software as the style looks identical) in the back of the Travel
Guide. There used to be one in each of the main stops, but this
hasn't been the case for a while - shame, as they are *very* useful to
someone familiar with the town but not with the bus routes.

Mind you, despite some recent praise for them, the timetables at both
the Kingston Centre and the Central Rail Station are wrong, and have
been for about 2 weeks. I await a response from both my local
councillor (who is usually quite good) and the Council transport
department to my pointing this out.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

On Thu, 05 May 2005 13:52:10 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:

I'm not too keen on those for London; useful for making connections
between metro and bus, but in London, the more extensive Tube network
makes such connections useful in particular locations, where a spider
map is more handy.

Exactly - what I'm proposing is a map of trunk routes and nodes - the
nodes being represented by a spider on the back of the map. This
would show quite well how to "build" your connectional journey to a
given location.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

Tom Anderson wrote:
I've had an idea!

A map of London - could be geographical, could be a Beckian diagram -
showing where the bus hubs are. By 'bus hubs', i mean places that
have a
spider map centred on them. The point of this is that if you're
somewhere,
and you want to figure out how to get somewhere else by bus, you can
use
this map to figure out which spider map you want.

At the moment, there's no way to do this except local knowledge. For
instance, friday after next, i'll want to get from NW1 3EE to NW1
7AY. I
can plug this into the journey planner, and that's great, but i want
a
spider map for the starting end, so i can instantly see what bus
lines go
where, where i can catch them from, where else i might be able to go,
etc.
I guess the destination is Camden Town, but is the start also that?
Warren Street? Mornington Crescent? Euston?

Brilliant or what? Has this been done?

tom

--
I see large and small words on this page, arranged in long rows
separated by little dotty characters. Suspect written by little dotty
characters, too. -- RonJeffries



Check out my nodal bus map at http://www.quickmap.com/snip2.htm which
addresses some of your points.

Andrew