On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:24:59 -0700, brixtonite
wrote:

On Jul 3, 9:30 pm, Paul Corfield wrote:



unhelpful. I have lost count of the people who look at the one at my
local stop and then come away mystified as to when their next bus will
turn up - this is because it says something stupid like every 9-11
minutes rather than actually tell them buses come at 07,17,27,37,47 and
57 minutes past the hour (which is what the real contracted timetable
does actually say).


Does every route have a specified tmetable like this? To be honest
I'm glad that the exact times aren't given on most routes in inner
London during the daytime, since the buses can't stick to them very
closely. (Night buses, and infrequent suburban buses are a different
matter).
But saying buses run every 9-11 minutes is equally bizarre, since
obviously there are plenty of times when you get two buses together
and then nothing for fifteen minutes: 'every ten minutes' is a more
sensible thing for the timetable to say, since '9 - 11' implies
greater accuracy. What is one to make of a timetable that says buses
run 'every 8 - 12 minutes' at some times, and 'every 9 - 10 minutes'
at others?

Yes every service has a real contractual timetable.

A non TfL website has quite a lot of info here

http://www.londonbusroutes.net/details.htm

Click on the route number in the big list to bring up the timetable if
one is available. Note TfL no longer officially produce or publish
proper timetables - IMO it's shameful that a private individual is left
to provide this sort of valuable info for one of the great world cities.

Depending on how frequent a service then service performance may be
measured either on keeping buses running to the broad frequency (for
what TfL call high frequency routes) or to the scheduled timetable (for
low frequency routes)

More info here

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/businessan...reports/#faqs2

If my bus service ran every 5 minutes and did so reliably then I really
wouldn't care about a timetable. However I object to being left to just
wander to a bus stop to wait up to 12 minutes just because TfL can't be
bothered to tell me the minutes past the hour a bus runs. Only when
frequencies reach every 15 minutes or less frequently do they put up the
minutes past the hour at the stop. It is also worth noting that many
bus frequencies are not that high early in the morning or late in the
evening even on trunk routes running from Central London.

I recognise things can go wrong and buses do diverge from the timetable
and that's fine if I have access to good information to allow me to make
more informed choices. As I cannot take any decent TfL produced
information with me I have to spend a load of time researching all
possible options before I leave and then scribble them down so if I am
making lots of journeys on unfamiliar services (as I did visiting some
gardens open under the National Garden Scheme the other Sunday). This is
a pain in the posterior - why can't I just pop to a travel info centre
and ask for the timetable leaflets or buy a timetable book? Strange
that even my least favourite commercial operators outside of London can
manage to do this relatively easily.

Overall I think the TfL bus network is pretty damn good but the whole
approach to passenger information I cannot stand.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Wed, 04 Jul 2007 18:30:37 +0100, Paul Corfield
wrote:

Overall I think the TfL bus network is pretty damn good but the whole
approach to passenger information I cannot stand.

Agreed, with the exception of the spider maps and the display of
numbers and directions on the stop, both of which are very useful and
almost completely absent in other parts of the UK.

Indeed, an official Government document (that I found somewhere hidden
away on one of the Traveline sites) states that numbers on the flag
are "time consuming and expensive". That they might be, but the
effort is worth it.

Neil

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

Paul Corfield wrote:

Overall I think the TfL bus network is pretty damn good but the whole
approach to passenger information I cannot stand.

Come to think of it, every tube station seems to have a rack of boat
timetables, but no bus map. I suppose LU views buses as competition, but
boats as something that people will visit by tube.

On Thu, 5 Jul 2007 15:23:07 +0100, "John Rowland"
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:

Overall I think the TfL bus network is pretty damn good but the whole
approach to passenger information I cannot stand.

Come to think of it, every tube station seems to have a rack of boat
timetables, but no bus map. I suppose LU views buses as competition, but
boats as something that people will visit by tube.

I really don't think anyone in LU sees buses as competition to the tube.
I've never heard that expressed and given we all report back to TfL I
can't see that such an attitude would be tolerated. I think it is back
to the lack of promotion of the bus network as a companion to the rail
and tube network.

When the old style Local Bus Guide was put in the tube racks at Seven
Sisters or Walthamstow Central it would be whipped out of the racks very
quickly as people clearly wanted the information. The same happens with
the London Connection Map - One had put a load of them in their racks at
Walthamstow yesterday (I picked one up myself) and today they are all
gone while all other leaflets are still there. From very simple
observations I would say there is a real demand for network forms of
information and yet there is so little of it produced. Something
different has to be done if people really are to be persuaded / pushed
out of their cars and on to public transport.

If you were to say that many people in LU know very little about the bus
network and how it works and where it goes then I would agree with that.
I could surmise that the same would be true if you asked people in
Surface Transport (buses) about how LU works although they would be a
bit more familiar with the basics of the tube map (like many people)
given its prominence and their familiarity with it.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!