I have just come back from a trip to London and am wondering, am I
right in thinking that there are no walk in travel centres like I've
come to expect elsewhere in the UK anywhere in London

The Travel Information Centres that TfL advertise seem to be no more
than a glorified tube station ticket window or bus station inspector's
window. You have to ask for what publicity you want and then you have
to know what to ask for, and I'm sure they don't like giving out any
more than 1 or 2 items per person

Also whereas Tube maps are available in the racks at all tube
stations, it is very hard to find any bus maps on display anywhere.

In fact bus information is hard to find in general, once you get to a
bus stop you've got all the info, but before that there doesn't seem
to be any printed material showing even how often a bus runs. The
'Continuing your journey from' leaflets are a good idea but again
there's nothing that says if the services listed are every 4 minutes
or every 30 minutes. In my opinion it would also be a good idea to
include the bus line maps as found in bus shelters in these leaflets

It is also ironic how the only information about buses that is
available to take away is produced by London Underground and only
available at tube stations

Considering TfL seem to at least from a visitor's point of view have
it all sorted, these issues seem strange, I would have thought that
TfL would have a huge budget to spend on all kinds of maps and
leaflets

Andrew

West Yorkshire Bus wrote:
I have just come back from a trip to London and am wondering, am I
right in thinking that there are no walk in travel centres like I've
come to expect elsewhere in the UK anywhere in London

The Travel Information Centres that TfL advertise seem to be no more
than a glorified tube station ticket window or bus station inspector's
window. You have to ask for what publicity you want and then you have
to know what to ask for, and I'm sure they don't like giving out any
more than 1 or 2 items per person

The one at Victoria is a walk-in office off the mainline station
concourse. However the staff still sit behind glass screens...

--
Phil Richards, London, UK
3,600+ railway photos since 1980 at:
http://europeanrail.fotopic.net
http://britishrail.fotopic.net

On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 18:16:51 -0000, West Yorkshire Bus
wrote:

I have just come back from a trip to London and am wondering, am I
right in thinking that there are no walk in travel centres like I've
come to expect elsewhere in the UK anywhere in London

The Travel Information Centres that TfL advertise seem to be no more
than a glorified tube station ticket window or bus station inspector's
window. You have to ask for what publicity you want and then you have
to know what to ask for, and I'm sure they don't like giving out any
more than 1 or 2 items per person

[snip]
Considering TfL seem to at least from a visitor's point of view have
it all sorted, these issues seem strange, I would have thought that
TfL would have a huge budget to spend on all kinds of maps and
leaflets

To call it strange is an understatement. I cannot fathom TfL's approach
to bus information at all and I find the absence of decent, high quality
travel centres to be bizarre. As an example of better practice
elsewhere Lothian Buses manage to run 3 shops in central Edinburgh
including one which is open on Sundays and it does a very good passing
trade from observations earlier this year. Timetables are all on display
and available for you to take - to get a moderately decent map you had
to ask and again there is no "integrated" transport map showing all
buses and trains which is a big gap for me. TfL travel info centres are
often open 7 days in the centre of town but as you say they are not what
you call welcoming and information leaflets appear to have the status of
a trade secret. Quite how so many people manage to use the bus network
with next to no easy to use information to hand I don't know.

TfL seem to assume that everyone has internet access and has scrapped
anything resembling decent portable information on its bus services.
Local guides have been scrapped, decent timetables have been scrapped
and the quadrant bus maps were threatened with withdrawal and I
personally believe they will go sooner rather than later. The approach
seems to centre on "simple" information being provided at stops but stop
specific timetables are often inaccurate and in my view utterly
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).

Having the Journey Planner is all well and good but it is not a
substitute for a decent guide to services that people can carry with
them or consult at their leisure. I happened to pick up a copy of
Brighton and Hove's "Bus Times" guide at the weekend. This is a
comprehensive and excellent guide to Brighton's buses. There are full
clear timetables, fares information, bus type info, very detailed bus
maps, accessibility information for every route and a mini route map for
every service at the head of the timetable. There is also good
integration information with rail services and info on special bargain
tickets, Plus Bus and other initiatives. I thought it was an excellent,
well pitched document that is easy to read and understand and which a
"novice" bus user could easily use to get them using bus services. As a
potential visitor to the Brighton it is nice to have all the necessary
info to hand if I decide I want to travel around by bus and I also know
that there tickets I can buy in advance that mean I don't have to fumble
for money for each bus ride.

Now if only TfL could spend some of their financial surplus on doing
something like that for respective areas of London and getting it
through people's letter boxes and available on buses, in bus stations
and at tube / railway stations I would be very happy indeed. Instead
there is a load of money being spent on "personal travel plans" and
other such stuff which may yield benefits in time but which seem a very
expensive way of engaging with the travelling public.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

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?

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

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?

That in the first case you need to leave an extra 12 minutes for your
journey in case you miss one? I'd prefer a real timetable so far as
possible (and I realise it isn't necessarily feasible in congested
parts of London).

Neil

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

Paul Corfield wrote:

I cannot fathom TfL's
approach to bus information at all and I find the absence of decent,
high quality travel centres to be bizarre.

Unless they've closed recently, there are decent bus information centres
dotted around. Harrow bus station, Turnpike Lane bus station and North
Greenwich spring to mind. I've always found the offices at Liverpool Street,
Victoria and Euston useful. Canning Town too.

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 Tue, 3 Jul 2007 23:50:07 +0100, "John Rowland"
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:

I cannot fathom TfL's
approach to bus information at all and I find the absence of decent,
high quality travel centres to be bizarre.

Unless they've closed recently, there are decent bus information centres
dotted around. Harrow bus station, Turnpike Lane bus station and North
Greenwich spring to mind. I've always found the offices at Liverpool Street,
Victoria and Euston useful. Canning Town too.

To be strictly correct they are little offices with a person stuck
behind a sheet of glass - if someone is in the office. My local bus
station - Walthamstow - is not too bad and they do have some little
racks outside the office that they stock up with the quadrant bus maps.
Plenty of people pick them up but this seems to be a local initiative.
I have yet to see anyone at the North Greenwich or Turnpike Lane offices
so therefore it's impossible to get at any of the information they may
have. Stratford sometimes has a person in the office but they prefer to
ignore you if you want something but they'll arrest you if happen to
point a camera at a bus. Harrow and Canning Town I've not been to for a
long time so cannot comment. The other places you list are TICs and
again the whole presentation of these places is unfriendly.

London has nothing on a par with the best of PTE or even bus company
practice where there is something like a shop that is well laid out with
easy to access information and an open counter area where people are not
imprisoned behind glass. I appreciate there may be legitimate security
issues at some locations but not at all of them. I've been to the West
Midlands several times over the last year and found the Centro offices
to be very good with excellent leaflet and map displays and helpful
staff. Other PTEs are also good in this respect and make a decent
effort in their new bus stations to provide such facilities.

I used to work in a Tyne and Wear PTE Travel Office many years ago and I
know how popular that facility was. We had loads of regular customers
and not just for coach and excursion tickets. People used to ask when
new timetable books and maps were being published and we would have
queues of people waiting to buy them. We often ran out of such
publications and kept having to get new stock in. I know life has moved
on a bit since those days but I remain convinced that personal service
and convenient provision of information in a wide range of forms is the
best way to communicate with your customers / passengers. "Having a
relationship with your customers" is one of the marketing buzz phrases
these days - well way back in the 1980s we had that in Tyne and Wear.

You might imagine that TfL might have decided to dedicate some space at
the LT Museum shop to provide a good quality information outlet for TfL
services but no. The shop itself is nicely done given the constraints
of the site and clearly there is a push to exploit the LT / TfL brand
for all its worth - shame it doesn't translate into the approach of
"selling" the core business of buses, tubes, DLR and trams.
--
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.

On 4 Jul, 18:46, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 23:50:07 +0100, "John Rowland"

wrote:
Paul Corfield wrote:

I cannot fathom TfL's
approach to bus information at all and I find the absence of decent,
high quality travel centres to be bizarre.

Unless they've closed recently, there are decent bus information centres
dotted around. Harrow bus station, Turnpike Lane bus station and North
Greenwich spring to mind. I've always found the offices at Liverpool Street,
Victoria and Euston useful. Canning Town too.

To be strictly correct they are little offices with a person stuck
behind a sheet of glass - if someone is in the office. My local bus
station - Walthamstow - is not too bad and they do have some little
racks outside the office that they stock up with the quadrant bus maps.
Plenty of people pick them up but this seems to be a local initiative.
I have yet to see anyone at the North Greenwich or Turnpike Lane offices
so therefore it's impossible to get at any of the information they may
have. Stratford sometimes has a person in the office but they prefer to
ignore you if you want something but they'll arrest you if happen to
point a camera at a bus. Harrow and Canning Town I've not been to for a
long time so cannot comment. The other places you list are TICs and
again the whole presentation of these places is unfriendly.

London has nothing on a par with the best of PTE or even bus company
practice where there is something like a shop that is well laid out with
easy to access information and an open counter area where people are not
imprisoned behind glass. I appreciate there may be legitimate security
issues at some locations but not at all of them. I've been to the West
Midlands several times over the last year and found the Centro offices
to be very good with excellent leaflet and map displays and helpful
staff. Other PTEs are also good in this respect and make a decent
effort in their new bus stations to provide such facilities.

I used to work in a Tyne and Wear PTE Travel Office many years ago and I
know how popular that facility was. We had loads of regular customers
and not just for coach and excursion tickets. People used to ask when
new timetable books and maps were being published and we would have
queues of people waiting to buy them. We often ran out of such
publications and kept having to get new stock in. I know life has moved
on a bit since those days but I remain convinced that personal service
and convenient provision of information in a wide range of forms is the
best way to communicate with your customers / passengers. "Having a
relationship with your customers" is one of the marketing buzz phrases
these days - well way back in the 1980s we had that in Tyne and Wear.

You might imagine that TfL might have decided to dedicate some space at
the LT Museum shop to provide a good quality information outlet for TfL
services but no. The shop itself is nicely done given the constraints
of the site and clearly there is a push to exploit the LT / TfL brand
for all its worth - shame it doesn't translate into the approach of
"selling" the core business of buses, tubes, DLR and trams.
--
Paul C

Admits to working for London Underground!

These are the comparisons between London and in my case West Yorkshire
that I can't understand

I did visit the Victoria station info centre and was faced with a
pokey little office with staff behind windows, no leaflets on display
and a queue of people stretching out of the door, so I wasn't going to
queue for leaflets

Compare this with Leeds City Bus Station where you've got staff sat at
a counter and open racks with timetables for every bus in Leeds and
maps for all of West Yorkshire. Similar situations apply in Manchester
(although staff sit behind glass) and South Yorkshire (SYPTE's new
travel centres are even more relaxed)

I would have used the buses more frequently whilst in London but I
only managed to find a Central London map late into my visit that
happened to be available in the racks at a tube station somewhere, and
even then there is no guide to how often the services actually run

Regarding the lack of timetables, I understand that frequent services
don't run to time but there should still be timetables (like First do
for Overground bus routes) that say something like

0515, 0545, 0610, 0630, 0640 Then at least every 10 minutes until
1920, 1935 then at least every 15 minutes until 2245, 2310

Even if they didn't do that, a simple frequency guide would help. I
can't believe that there is nothing in print that says how often a
service runs

Considering the Underground is pretty much at full capacity and there
is no room for increases in capacity, they should promote the buses
more