Friday Reads – November 17, 2017

13 comments

1. To answer the first question, yes I might now take a bus one or two stops where I would have previously walked if it’s at no extra charge.

   Otherwise I will continue to use the most optimal mode of transport that takes me where I want to go at the price I want to pay.

   I sometimes carry around two Oysters (or use two bank cards / Oyster + contactless) to get a second bus trip free despite taking a train in between.

2. The secondary references in the “Imperial Airways” article are utterly fascinating – recommended.
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   

3. Not terribly impressed with that Citymetric article as they’re normally pretty much spot on. There are factual errors (there aren’t 10,000 buses in schedued service) and typos which are not what I expect. There is also too great a willingness to accept that the Mayor’s “initiatives” are a positive and clearly no recognition whatsoever that there is an ongoing programme of bus cuts across London which is forcing people into longer waits, more crowded buses or leaving them unable to travel at convenient times. I view that as far too high a price for London to be paying for a policy of “cost efficiency” and “frozen fares”.

   One day we might actually see some evidence from TfL as to how the Hopper fare has and is continuing to affect how people use the bus network and whether it influences modal choice for passengers. Headlines citing “100 million journeys” are not especially helpful without clarity as to how many are genuinely new trips, how many are trips that were always made but now at a lower price and how many are people making the same “A to B” trip but using different services than before. Further without a view on what has happened to revenue and the ticket sales split we can’t determine if the Hopper fare has been a positive or negative for TfL’s bank balance. I note with interest that the 2018 fares advice says that the impact on revenue from the “unlimited journeys” Hopper is only expected to be £5m per annum. This rather suggests that they do not expect much change in how people use buses and that few people need to / do change buses twice within an hour.

   I hope TfL do share some research findings before the next phase of Hopper goes live. It would help to inform debate about the future of the bus network and whether the Hopper ticket is changing the way in which TfL view the network and plan its development – for example are through services no longer considered valued additions if people can change routes for “free”?

4. WW
   There’s another side-effect of “Hopper” or free transfers of service, if through routes are curtailed – a time penalty for the user.
   Because, most times, if you now have to change from service A to service B, rather than, as previously continuing on athe originally-longer-route A, then you will be standing around, waiting for bus B to show up, rather than plodding onwards.
   On the few occasions I uses buses, I certainly try to avoid changes, for this very reason …
   So I wonder how this will play out in the greater scheme of things across London?

5. @ Greg – it does, of course, depend where you are in the network. Some links involving a change may offer high frequencies on both legs so waiting time may be minimal. Other places may be much closer to your example and it varies by time of day and day of week too.

   There are a number of potential problems with the Hopper ticket depending on what your preferences are. If you prefer a through bus then these may, in time, become endangered because TfL may decide they are not worth providing if people can travel on separate routes and change. This is the argument being poorly deployed, IMO, in support of Zone 1 bus changes. The greater danger is that TfL may change their evaluation models when looking at network development. There is parlous little network development these days that adds new links and we have to be watchful to see what form it takes. The very few proposals that have been / are in consultation all involve compromises and cuts that we probably would not have seen 10-15 years ago under another Mayor. I am just waiting for a “network review” to take place in some part of London where the “hopper effect” is let loose and long established links are broken left, right and centre in the name of “efficiency”. One wonders if the public will wake up to what is going on then or whether TfL will just shove the changes through regardless. There is very little political criticism of what is going on – presumably because Labour AMs don’t want to criticise a Labour Mayor and opposition AMs haven’t worked out what’s happening.

6. Anyone else getting the feeling that the JR 20-second apology is just a publicity stunt?

7. @ Ryan

   That sort of thing would be apology-worthy in an honour-based culture like Japan’s. That global news media has picked it up, however, sniffs of PR.

   A train leaving 20 seconds early is worse than 20 seconds late – 20 seconds late and it is slightly behind schedule and can probably make that up before too long. 20 seconds early and you have made the people who would have made the train if it left on time have to wait for the next train.

8. Early departures are penalised more heavily than late ones of similar magnitude even in London, ISTR?

9. The article does rather assume that bus ridership is a retail commodity. In fact is not like selling baked beans where month-on-month, year-on-year growth is critical to the business. In our world it can be the case that a fall in bus demand (to walking and cycling instead for example) is in fact beneficial to the city.

   The wonderful flexible bus service can be adjusted to match demand and this is being done: and some of the savings reinvested in areas where there is growth. The London-wide statistics are a heavy average and there are places where demand is growing.

   By the way the highest peak vehicle requirement was 8170 as at 31 March 2017.

10. @Leon Daniels: and indeed a shift from buses to the Tube, if there is now more Tube capacity available, is not a bad thing as the Tube is an inherently more efficient method of transporting people in large numbers. This can then free up buses to serve non-Tube areas instead of using buses as an expensive way of meeting the overspill from the Tube in Zone 1.

11. @ Leon Daniels / Ian J – can anyone cite an example where the current cuts to routes and frequencies are releasing resources to improve any bus services? Even new routes like the 483 have seen cuts while other areas such as mine are seeing revised service levels that are the worst we’ve had for 20+ years. And please don’t cite the Mini Holland as some sort of justification as the infrastructure is barely used and we’re seeing the council rework expensive public realm works only put in 2 years ago! A monstrous waste of money.

    Is it not the case that TfL are axeing 6m kms this year to save £25m? I genuinely can’t think of a new route added to the network or a substantive frequency improvement that has happened since May 2016. Prior to that TfL had spent money to add capacity in the Barking, Ealing and Hounslow areas.

12. Although the SF BART’s new tracks are coming online, the new trains have not started service yet, leading to the line extremities being reduced to half service to fully utilise the finite supply of old trains (c.f. NLU2, JLE2).

13. There’s the segregation argument that shorter segments are managed efficiently isolated from other interference. The network is more simply represented and load factors higher.

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