On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Paul Weaver wrote:

On 19 Feb, 17:17, "Jeremy Parker" wrote:
"Paul Weaver" wrote

[snip]

Bus drivers in London are a menace to cyclists, often

overtaking with inches to spare, then pulling in and slamming the
brakes on. They are loud and stink. Taxi's aren't much better when
it
comes to running you off the road.

[snip]

Cyclists who have that problem have usually created it for themselves
by riding too close to the kerb.

As everyone will tell you, read John Franklin's "Cyclecraft", the
stuff about primary and secondary positions.

How does it help on a two lane road like Bayeswater Road?

The same happens on Caledonian Road. There's a stop just before the NLL
(?) bridge where this happens most of the times i go up there.

Simple answer is to prevent buses, taxis, and any other vehicle that is
likely to stop in a few yards from overtaking bikes

Or anything else.

at all times.

I thought this was even in the highway code, but apparently not. Rule 158
is similar in spirit, though.

Still, what you going to do.

Flip out, buy a rifle, and start killing people.

tom

--
the themes of time-travel, dreams, madness, and destiny are inextricably
confused

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

Andrew wrote:
Motorists who feel aggrieved by the extension of the London charging
zone have some positive assistance this week with the launch of a new
easy-to-read bus map for London.
Easy-to-read? It gives me a headache.

I don't like it.

Or, download a super-simple version from:
http://www.quickmap.com/downloads/q20supersimple.pdf

Super-simple?

Not really.

Then again, London's bus maps aren't designed to make it easy to trace a
route, which is the style I'm used to:
http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/manbus.pdf

I'm not sure if that style is genuinely easier to read or if I just find
it easier to read because I'm accustomed to it. Has it ever been
attempted for London?

The real issue is that New York's bus system is a fair bit simpler than
London's. I have used it and "studied" it from bus maps. Your use of
and familiarity with your grid street pattern must also assist in
comprehending the bus network. The use of "uptown", "midtown" and
"downtown" as commonly understood descriptions of areas of Manhatten is
also a further help. IIRC many services are described in this way as
they run N-S or E-W (Crosstown?) - this must also help people know which
way a bus is going. We really only have West End and City plus some
district names which are very familiar like "Victoria".

I know the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn are more involved in terms of
service provision but your overall number of regular NYCTA routes is
still relatively small. I know there are commuter express services as
well but I believe they are advertised separately.

You tend to have only one route on many main corridors which assists
with map clarity hugely - in Central London that is pretty rare. We
often have 3 as a minimum and up to 10 or so on the very busiest
streets.

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much more
useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

The one advantage they do have is that they make an attempt to show you
exactly (for the immediate area) and approximately (wider radius from
origin) where bus stops are. That is a help.
(snip)

My impression of bus use in London is that it is broadly confined to the
use of single routes from origin to destination - ISTR a statistic that
only 4% of journeys involving buses, involved changing from one bus to
another. However, I have no source for that, so don't quote me! Maybe
I'll see if I can dig it out somewhere.

I think buses become particularly attractive when they are direct -
whereas with the Tube, people aren't anywhere near as put off changing
lines (because it's relatively easy to find your way around a Tube station).

Putting information on making onward connections by bus could make the
diagrams overly complicated, just to serve a fairly small proportion of
passengers. The only way I can think of to make a clear diagram like
this is to combine the spider and the traditional bus map - by using the
traditional map as a base, and overlaying buses from the current
location as individual coloured lines.

The problem with that is that where there are long routes that can be
shrunk in a spider diagram but will not fit into a traditional map -
this is the case for many routes on the central London traditional map.
The most useful connections will be those outside central London, which
wouldn't be represented by the map I describe.


--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Dave A wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much more
useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

My impression of bus use in London is that it is broadly confined to the use
of single routes from origin to destination - ISTR a statistic that only 4%
of journeys involving buses, involved changing from one bus to another.

Any idea if that includes night buses? I can almost never get home in the
wee small hours without changing.

Putting information on making onward connections by bus could make the
diagrams overly complicated, just to serve a fairly small proportion of
passengers. The only way I can think of to make a clear diagram like
this is to combine the spider and the traditional bus map - by using the
traditional map as a base, and overlaying buses from the current
location as individual coloured lines.

How about annotating the spiders to show interchange points, as on the
tube strip maps? So, for instance, on the Finsbury Park spider, the
Holloway Nag's Head stop on the 29/253/etc bundle would have a little box
saying "4 17 43 271 393", maybe with arrows pointing away on either side
labelled "Archway" and "Highbury & Islington" (or something, since not all
those routes go those ways). It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but
if you were at A, wanted to go to B, and knew what the routes serving B
were, you could look for a suitable C on the spider map at A. Even if you
didn't know the routes at B, you could perhaps make a reasonable guess
based on the destination hints. The key problem would probably be the
sheer number of boxes and arrows - there are a *lot* of routes in London!

tom

--
THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD'S ONLY GOT ONE ARM!

In message . com, Paul
Weaver writes
So, this bus is now 2 foot infront of you, you have to slam your
brakes on to avoid plowing into the bus. You could move to lane 2 to
re-overtake, however there is traffic behind you, and in the time it
takes you to check over your shoulder, you could plow into the back of
the bus. So there's no choice except to slow and stop. You then fidn
that lane 2 is full.
I think you're beginning to get a taste of what it's like to be a
pedestrian on a foot path and cyclists are coming towards you, they're a
menace to me and their selves.
--
Clive.

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.

Good point -- the bus route network is much denser in London than in
NYC. I wonder why that is.

Partly historic reasons - London's early adoption of railways and tubes
resulted in an infrastructure that is difficult and expensive to adapt
to modern needs, so buses were an important adjunct to the transport
system from the late 19th-century onwards (in fact, many of the more
tortuous routes still follow the lines of 19th-century horse-bus routes).

Partly demographic reasons - In 1880 NYC's population was only just over
1.2m whereas London's was already three times that size. With little
room for new roads or new railways, buses and trams were the only solution.

Partly social reasons - traditionally, buses provided a cheap form of
transport and the network was taken under state control at an early
stage. Today, it is still a highly regulated network and (as Paul C
rightly states in this group) benefits from a "virtuous circle" in which
high frequencies make it popular, and so generate more and more traffic.

Partly environmental reasons - only today the London Congestion Zone has
been expanded, making it prohibitively expensive (when combined with car
parking charges) for most of us to drive into Central London. Thus there
is a strong demand for public transport, of which buses form an
important part.

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.

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'm a car owner, living 8 miles from the centre of London - but I would
almost always go into that centre by railway or bus + tube: taking the
car usually makes no economic sense.)

I'm a reverse commuter, living in Manhattan but working at the south end
of Brooklyn. I'm also a car owner, but I generally leave mine at work,
since it's simply not worth the hassle or expense of driving on a
regular basis. Besides, it's difficult to get work done while behind
the wheel of a car, while I'm generally quite productive during my 45
minutes on the B train.

Of course, we don't have a congestion charge here. Yet.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

Paul Corfield wrote:

The real issue is that New York's bus system is a fair bit simpler than
London's. I have used it and "studied" it from bus maps. Your use of
and familiarity with your grid street pattern must also assist in
comprehending the bus network. The use of "uptown", "midtown" and
"downtown" as commonly understood descriptions of areas of Manhatten is
also a further help. IIRC many services are described in this way as
they run N-S or E-W (Crosstown?) - this must also help people know which
way a bus is going. We really only have West End and City plus some
district names which are very familiar like "Victoria".

True. It seems like London is very much organized around specific
points of interest, while New York is organized around streets and
overall directions.

I know the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn are more involved in terms of
service provision but your overall number of regular NYCTA routes is
still relatively small. I know there are commuter express services as
well but I believe they are advertised separately.

I'm impressed with your knowledge of our bus system!

You tend to have only one route on many main corridors which assists
with map clarity hugely - in Central London that is pretty rare. We
often have 3 as a minimum and up to 10 or so on the very busiest
streets.

Especially in Manhattan, we often have more than one -- three isn't
terribly uncommon. But I don't think we ever have more than six, not
counting the express routes that, as you point out, are advertised
separately (so they don't clutter the main Manhattan map).

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much more
useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

But the same goes for our bus stop maps. We don't have systemwide (or
borough) maps at the bus stops; we just have individual route maps.
Except that yours are easier to read. (Yours are also customized for
the bus stop, while ours cover the entire route.)

Each bus stop in the city has a four-sided Guide-a-Ride box. If only
one route stops there, one panel has the map, one panel has the
timetable, one panel covers general information, and one panel has a NO
STANDING sign. If two routes stop there, both maps and both timetables
are posted. If three routes stop there, typically only one timetable is
posted -- invariably /not/ the timetable for the least frequent route
(i.e., the one whose timetable would be most useful). If four routes
stop there, forget about timetables. I can't think of any single bus
stops shared by five or more routes (typically they'd have staggered
stops in such a situation).

And anything is better than what NJTransit provides:
http://www.njtransit.com/pdf/bus/T0001.pdf

Actually as a pocket guide I think that is not too bad. It should be in
24 hour clock format but at least it is an attempt to show every trip
with journey time. Oh how I wish we could have that in London - it is
only courtesy of a non TfL website that I have something approximating
to the real timetable for my local route. I consider that to be a huge
failing on the part of TfL - it's not as if we didn't used to have such
info. The half hearted local transport guides have been scrapped. Even
our quadrant bus maps are threatened which is another insane piece of
nonsense.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The schedules themselves are fine (although
Americans, for some reason, seem to be allergic to the 24-hour clock, or
at least the schedule designers think we are). It's the route map that
I object to. Strenuously.

The guide also has an approximate geographic representation of the route
the bus takes, transfer points, services to transfer to and some fare /
zone information. It even tells you when there is a holiday schedule
operating. Try finding any of that in London in a leaflet!

Keep in mind that NJT does not publish an overall bus map. For most
routes, the "approximate geographic representation" is all there is.
And, in my experience, it's completely useless.

For instance, look at the map for the 319:
http://www.njtransit.com/pdf/bus/T0319.pdf

It certainly looks to me like there is a simple transfer between the
train and the bus in Atlantic City. Nope! The train station and the
bus station are several blocks apart, not signposted. Although the bus
passes closer to the train station, the only stop it makes in Atlantic
City is at the bus station itself.

I will say, most transit agencies in the U.S. do post detailed
timetables. If anything, New York City Transit is the exception; on
many of the more frequent routes, notations like "Then every 6-8 minutes
until" are common.

If you like highly detailed timetables, please send me an email.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:59:26 +0000, Tom Anderson
wrote:

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, James Farrar wrote:

On 19 Feb 2007 02:30:32 -0800, "Paul Weaver"
wrote:

Say make the following roads motor-free (and get rid of
speed bumps, traffic lights etc):

Embankment from Albert Bridge to Tower Bridge, Oxford Street/
BayswaterRoad from Notting Hill to Liverpool Street, The Strand, The
Mall, Portland Street/Regent Street, Woburn Place/Kingway/Waterloo
Bridge, Blackfriars Road/Bridge Farringdon Road, and Bishopscade/
London Bridge/Borough Road/Westminster Bridge Road/Birdcage Road

The office I work at is on one of those, and relies almost entirely on
motor vehicles for a significant part of its business, so I hope your
plan is going to cover the relocation costs!

If i may ask, what's the business, and what does it use motor vehicles
for?

A printing firm. Getting jobs to and from customers.

We *do* have foot messengers for small jobs to local addresses, but
that's a small minority of the work we do.

Not to mention large scale deliveries. As I was leaving work this
morning we had 50+ reams of paper turn up. How are they supposed to
deliver that without a lorry?

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, Clive Coleman. wrote:

In message . com, Paul
Weaver writes

So, this bus is now 2 foot infront of you, you have to slam your brakes
on to avoid plowing into the bus. You could move to lane 2 to
re-overtake, however there is traffic behind you, and in the time it
takes you to check over your shoulder, you could plow into the back of
the bus. So there's no choice except to slow and stop. You then fidn
that lane 2 is full.

I think you're beginning to get a taste of what it's like to be a
pedestrian on a foot path and cyclists are coming towards you, they're a
menace to me and their selves.

True. People who ride bikes on footways (that have pedestrians on them)
should be strung up.

tom

--
Yulava? Niob Yam!

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, James Farrar wrote:

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:59:26 +0000, Tom Anderson
wrote:

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, James Farrar wrote:

On 19 Feb 2007 02:30:32 -0800, "Paul Weaver"
wrote:

Say make the following roads motor-free (and get rid of
speed bumps, traffic lights etc):

Embankment from Albert Bridge to Tower Bridge, Oxford Street/
BayswaterRoad from Notting Hill to Liverpool Street, The Strand, The
Mall, Portland Street/Regent Street, Woburn Place/Kingway/Waterloo
Bridge, Blackfriars Road/Bridge Farringdon Road, and Bishopscade/
London Bridge/Borough Road/Westminster Bridge Road/Birdcage Road

The office I work at is on one of those, and relies almost entirely on
motor vehicles for a significant part of its business, so I hope your
plan is going to cover the relocation costs!

If i may ask, what's the business, and what does it use motor vehicles
for?

A printing firm. Getting jobs to and from customers.

We *do* have foot messengers for small jobs to local addresses, but
that's a small minority of the work we do.

What's the typical deliver size? Or rather, what weight would you say 80%
of deliveries are smaller than or equal to? Would it be small enough to do
by bike (using a freight bike of some sort, rather than a courier's
panniers)?

Not to mention large scale deliveries. As I was leaving work this
morning we had 50+ reams of paper turn up. How are they supposed to
deliver that without a lorry?

I assume you get your paper in quite big sheets - 50 reams of A4 at 80 gsm
is 125 kg, doable on a trike or 8-freight or something. If it's A0,
though, that's two tonnes, which i would certainly agree requires motor
power!

tom

--
Yulava? Niob Yam!

On Feb 20, 2:00 am, "Clive Coleman." wrote:
I think you're beginning to get a taste of what it's like to be a
pedestrian on a foot path and cyclists are coming towards you, they're a
menace to me and their selves.

Indeed, often happens outside work, I "accidently" bump into them
sideways sometimes when I walk in, it's awful.