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?

tom

--
When I see a man on a bicycle I have hope for the human race. --
H. G. Wells

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, James Farrar wrote:

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

Andrew wrote:

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

Super-simple?

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?

I'm not convinced it would work; London is a somewhat less organised
city than NYC (especially north of 14th Street)!

Indeed - i didn't even know we *had* a 14th Street!

tom

--
When I see a man on a bicycle I have hope for the human race. --
H. G. Wells

"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.

Jeremy Parker

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, David of Broadway wrote:

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

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 closest we have are the quadrant maps:

http://cache.tfl.gov.uk/buses/pdfdocs/centlond.pdf
http://cache.tfl.gov.uk/buses/pdfdocs/n_east.pdf
etc

Which are, er, not very close. And there is the central London tourist bus
map:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/cen_bus.pdf

Which is very limited in scope, and only shows a subset of the routes in
the area it covers anyway.

I'm not convinced it would work; London is a somewhat less organised
city than NYC (especially north of 14th Street)!

You want disorganized? Maybe I should have linked to Brooklyn instead of
Manhattan:
http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/busbkln.pdf

My dear fellow, you really should look at a map of London some time. Even
Brooklyn is a paragon of geometrical order compared to this place.

It seems like there's a basic difference in how bus routes are planned
in the two cities. In New York, they're largely planned to run along a
series of streets, and in the process they happen to run past a series
of origins and destinations. In London, it appears as though they're
largely planned to run past a series of origins and destinations, and in
the process they happen to run along a series of streets. I'm sure
there are numerous exceptions in both cities, but the basic approach may
set the tone for the style of map.

Possibly. There are also a lot more areas of parallel streets in New York,
even in the outer boroughs, than in London.

Also, your Manhattan map shows a measly 42 routes; a quick,
semi-automatic, examination of the list on londonbusroutes.net indicates
that we have 612 bus routes in London, not including night routes but
including school relief and non-TfL routes. Not all of those go through
zone 1/2, which i'd say is our equivalent of Manhattan, but i would
imagine more than 42 do.

tom

--
When I see a man on a bicycle I have hope for the human race. --
H. G. Wells

On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:42:46 +0000, Michael Hoffman
wrote:

Andrew wrote:

http://www.quickmap.com/downloads/q20supersimple.pdf

While I appreciate the problems inherent in cramming so many buses onto
a single sheet of paper, it's hard to say that the map is "super simple."

I think it's horrible - a bubblemap on steroids.

I like the use of square brackets to indicate the terminus of a bus
route. Don't know what the wavy lines and underlines under a route
number means.

Wavy lines seem to indicate part time service over a given section of
route. This is correct for the 283 which does have differing termini
depending on whether it runs to the Wetland Centre or not. However it is
patently wrong for the 23 as all journeys run to Liverpool St and
Westbourne Park now. It is correct for the 271 which has variable
termini in the City. The underlining would seem to show a M-F only
service - this is only shown on the Red Arrows which I think are the
only services in Zone 1 with this service level.

Is it really necessary to have the gradient effect at every bus stop? I
find it visually distracting.

The whole thing is distracting. It also deals with tube and railway
stations in a strange and inconsistent manner.

Give me a proper map any day.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

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.

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.

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!

I think you don't know when you are well off !
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, David of Broadway wrote:

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

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 closest we have are the quadrant maps:

http://cache.tfl.gov.uk/buses/pdfdocs/centlond.pdf
http://cache.tfl.gov.uk/buses/pdfdocs/n_east.pdf
etc

Which are, er, not very close.

Not close at all! At a junction, I can't tell which bus routes go which
ways without matching a number over here to a number over there. I
can't simply follow a colored line.

And there is the central London tourist
bus map:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/cen_bus.pdf

Which is very limited in scope, and only shows a subset of the routes in
the area it covers anyway.

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. (I have nothing
against diagrams per se, and I think they work wonderfully for, e.g.,
the Underground, but I think a basic bus map works better in reference
to the surrounding street network.)

I'm not convinced it would work; London is a somewhat less organised
city than NYC (especially north of 14th Street)!

You want disorganized? Maybe I should have linked to Brooklyn instead
of Manhattan:
http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/busbkln.pdf

My dear fellow, you really should look at a map of London some time.
Even Brooklyn is a paragon of geometrical order compared to this place.

Oh, certainly, Brooklyn vs. London themselves. (I've been to London
several times and I have A-Z's dating back to the black-and-white days.)
I thought Mr(.) Farrar was referring to the bus route networks, not
the street networks.

It seems like there's a basic difference in how bus routes are planned
in the two cities. In New York, they're largely planned to run along
a series of streets, and in the process they happen to run past a
series of origins and destinations. In London, it appears as though
they're largely planned to run past a series of origins and
destinations, and in the process they happen to run along a series of
streets. I'm sure there are numerous exceptions in both cities, but
the basic approach may set the tone for the style of map.

Possibly. There are also a lot more areas of parallel streets in New
York, even in the outer boroughs, than in London.

Unquestionably. So street-oriented route design might not make much
sense in London.

Also, your Manhattan map shows a measly 42 routes; a quick,
semi-automatic, examination of the list on londonbusroutes.net indicates
that we have 612 bus routes in London, not including night routes but
including school relief and non-TfL routes. Not all of those go through
zone 1/2, which i'd say is our equivalent of Manhattan, but i would
imagine more than 42 do.

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

We have a total of 207 local and 36 express routes in the MTA New York
City Transit bus network, plus 46 local routes and 35 express routes in
the MTA Bus network (recently established to take over the private bus
operations mostly in Queens and the Bronx).
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

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? I typically
ride about within 6" the centre of lane 1. The bus then doesn't bother
pulling completely into lane 2, but even if it did, it has traffic
tailing it. It then pulls straight in front of you and slams its
breaks on. If you're luck it indicates. Practically every bus in rush
hour stops at every stop along that road, so it shouldn't be a
surprise to them.

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.

You can't normally ride in lane two, as you should stay in the left-
hand lane when not overtaking.

Simple answer is to prevent buses, taxis, and any other vehicle that
is likely to stop in a few yards from overtaking bikes at all times. I
wouldn't mind as much, but when going down bayswater road towards
holland park cyclists are almsot universally faster than buses.

It's as bas as when buses pointlessly overtake each other.

Still, what you going to do. Ken likes buses, they do no wrong.
Perhaps a small camera with wide angle lens mounted on the handlebars
taking a picture every half a second would provide enough evidence?

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.

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.

(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.)
--
Paul Terry

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, David of Broadway wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, David of Broadway wrote:

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

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?

I'm not convinced it would work; London is a somewhat less organised
city than NYC (especially north of 14th Street)!

You want disorganized? Maybe I should have linked to Brooklyn instead of
Manhattan:
http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/busbkln.pdf

My dear fellow, you really should look at a map of London some time. Even
Brooklyn is a paragon of geometrical order compared to this place.

Oh, certainly, Brooklyn vs. London themselves. (I've been to London several
times and I have A-Z's dating back to the black-and-white days.) I thought
Mr(.) Farrar was referring to the bus route networks, not the street
networks.

He was, but since the bus routes run along the streets, there is a certain
degree of relation between their level of order! In particular, New York
has a lot of griddy areas, where you can just fire a bus route down each
avenue, with a few going across, and you cover the whole area without the
routes crossing or converging. There aren't many places in London where
you can do that, so you end up with a lot more routes crisscrossing and
getting tangled up.

tom

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