Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. This week’s lineup:
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- • TfL is pedestrianising Oxford Street & rerouting the buses (CityMetric)
- • New TfL consultation on new walking/cycling river crossing between Rotherhithe and Canary Wharf (IanVisits)
- • List of London’s fictional Tube stations in film and television (IanVisits)
- • Uber ad exposes problem with Uber in crowded cities (StreetsBlog)
- • Toronto bike lane enforcement officer has his Twitter account suspended (CBC)
- • Congestion Pricing suggested for the Big Apple (Brown Political Review)
- • California sleeper bus startup (FastCompany)
- • LA’s LRT Regional Connector under construction (LA Curbed)
- • Tokyo Metro to turn on lights at 2 ghost stations (Asahi Shimbun)
If you haven’t visited our site before, check out our most popular articles:
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If you have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, please email us at [email protected].
It is Asahi Shimbun in Shinbum
[So it is! Corrected, cheers. LBM[
That bus-free Oxford St proposal is … interesting.
ISTM that TfL are assuming that cutting the routes into two new ones won’t matter, because … Crossrail, but I’m not so sure. Quite a lot of people won’t or can’t use the tube – how will they get around?
@ Greg – Don’t get me started on Oxford St – I’ll be in a permanent state of rage.
The assumption is that people will drag themselves down into the bowels of the earth and then back up again to use Crossrail along Oxford St or else walk. On the very rare occasions I go to Oxford St I will walk from a tube stn on arrival. If I need to get further along I jump on a bus. Plenty of people do likewise despite the vast culling of buses of Oxford St. Similarly if I want to get to elsewhere in the West End I prefer to jump on a bus than descend into the tube. This has been my preference for years. This *choice* is being forcibly removed with the only options being more expensive ones. On today’s fares you’ll pay 66% more on PAYG to go from TCR to Bond St by rail than by bus (ignoring daily caps / concessions). Draw your own conclusions as to what’s going on here. Not that it will matter to anyone but my rare visits to Oxford St will become zero visits to Oxford St in the future once the “bus massacre” has taken place.
The arrangements with respect to those who are mobility impaired / less ambulent / encumbered have not been confirmed yet. There is an extensive set of ideas and issues set out in the TfL consultation on the Oxford St changes. There is discussion about a possible “Mobility service” for older / disabled people but clearly this would be a vehicle of some form in a pedestrianised area which is probably deemed to be rather defeating the object! Only two bus routes may be rerouted via Wigmore St and these are essentially N-S routes not E-W ones. Bus stops and taxi ranks would be at least 200m and sometimes 300m away from Oxford St under the plans and Marble Arch will have to cater for vastly more terminating buses than now. In effect it will become a “bus station” in all but name with horrible and dangerous walking routes to get to stops. This will worsen further when / if TfL get round to closing the section of Oxford St between Selfridges and Marble Arch itself (the 3rd and final phase of the plan).
In short, and obviously IMO, it’s a complete mess and I certainly won’t forgive or forget the persons who are responsible for these proposals.
WW: without disagreeing with your general conclusions, or indeed with many of the details, I would just like to mention the (in my opinion) quite successful use (for people with walking difficulties) of electric golf carts in pedestrian areas of certain airports. They need specialist drivers, and specialist beeping noises, but today’s typical airport is not dissimilar to Oxford Street in many ways.
@Malcolm – Whilst noting the (in your opinion) quite successful use (for people with walking difficulties) of electric golf carts in pedestrian areas of certain airports, I side with WW on this and I hope like-minded folk don’t just voice an opinion here but respond to the consultation..
Let’s face it, the length of Oxford Street that is proposed to be affected by the removal of major bus routes extends over the length between four tube stations – Marble Arch, Bond Street, Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road. Those electric golf carts will require charging points, let alone additional facilities to negotiate within the department stores which presumably form the basis of the visit in the first place. In other words, that golf cart example is irrelevant in my view. Many can walk and don’t need a golf cart at all but won’t be willing to traverse far by foot along Oxford Street. Indeed, there will be many who can’t or won’t walk from the closest remaining bus stops or change to other modes, such as the depths of Crossrail, or even use the Central Line.
There has to be a compromise; otherwise, the whole thing is going to be either a mess or several will desert Oxford Street altogether. Oxford Street is an arterial route that needs to be served along its length by at least some bus routes. Of course, safer still would be a dedicated tram route but that has to be seen in the wider picture of at least one useful connecting route linking at least to a depot remote from Oxford Street. Cross River Tram was the scheme at one time thought to achieve that and maybe that scheme will be revived if somebody realises that the Bakerloo Line extension can no longer be afforded in these straitened times. I know that it has (had?) support from somebody senior in office.
Oxford Street pedestrianisation was always going to be an emotive subject with polarised views towards it.
If you want to see what the proposals actually are then see the very detailed consultation.
We hope to cover this topic shortly before the consultation ends in mid-December. Meanwhile, whilst not wanting to ban comments completely, can we avoid giving opinions on this. We aim to give you an opportunity to do so in about a month’s time.
The link provided by POP was to the response to the previous consultation. The new consultation is here
https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/oxford-street/
[I had corrected it shortly after originally posting – but clearly not quickly enough. PoP]
[Moderator’s note: This comment can stand, as Greg may not have seen PoP’s request to keep off the topic if you can bear to. But let’s limit it to one shortish comment per head for the time being, and please only comment if you feel you really must. Malcolm]
1: Comments
Malcolm
but today’s typical airport is not dissimilar to Oxford Street in many ways.
A vision of an eternal hell, you mean?
GF
Heartily agree .. the answer, in any city & possibly country but London or Britain outside Manchester; TRAMS. Like WW – don’t get me started, or I’ll explode.
2: Suggestions
There really have to be an adequate, if small number of either closely-parallel or actually-in-Oxford St bus routes, simply to handle the volume of traffic & cope with the less able & the claustrophobic. [ Trolleybuses? ] And, given the street-layout, Wigmore St, to the N is the obvious place, for the western section – how one deals with the eastern section beyond Oxford Circus is anyone’s guess, but it really is not going to be easy, is it?
Interesting from the LA article is that they are not proceeding with the notion of line letters, instead just keeping colours as they’ve realised they have enough distinguishable and easily named colours for the foreseeable future (despite a net gain of about 5 lines).
SI 11/11
I suffer from “colour vision deficiency” or, more colloquially, colour blindness. This smacks of discrimination against certain disabled people. At least Norwich First Bus route colours are backed up by route numbers!
@JimJordan – I’m not sure it smacks of discrimination – there are so many forms of colour vision deficiency that *any* combination of route colours would fox some people. To apply your argument rigorously, we would have an entirely monochrome map.
@Graham H, JimJordan
The general trend in transport has been to increase system understandability for the user. Line numbers (and letters) definitely help for most systems, as up to 15% of men can be colour blind in some way (far fewer women suffer from such colour perception issues).
Some years ago Chicago replaced its long L rail line names with simple colour names. Toronto has done so more recently, as it was hosting the 2015 PanAm Games and realised that having so many South American visitors have to figure out which is the ‘Yonge-University-Spadina’ line was not practical. Plus Toronto has a number of new LRT lines opening in the next 10 years.
Montreal has gone on the opposite direction, even of its ‘patron’ Metro system Paris, by removing the line numbers from its Metro system. Not sure why.
The Mexico City metro system, uniquely as far as I know, uses visual icons for each line as well as colours to help the illiterate.
@LBM -the sensible thing is to have both colours and numbers. We have had on this site several extended discussions about numbers before and I wouldn’t dare to repeat them now. I would say,however, that in the context of alarge and complex system like London’s, some differentiator other than colour alone is highly desirable, whether a number or a symbol. Even in those cultures,such as the French,where people appear to be aware of the existence of a number of shades as individually identifiable and nameable colours (eg marron, eau-de-nil), the number of available colours is small. Then Paris metro map is probably at the limit of what can be done.
I agree with you about names that are mouthfulls.
@Graham H: As an alternative for the colour blind (as well as more practical cases like monochrome printing), a monochrome map is fine: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/bw-large-print-map.pdf
@Jim Jordan – if they just did coloured dots, and not the words, then there would be an issue. However, despite the high proportion of men having issues with colours, the colour-blind issue was barely a factor in why LA considered lettering their lines (which would indeed be an improvement). This is because they (ditto Chicago, Boston, etc) write out and say the colour names and colour-blind people can tell the difference between ‘Blue’ and ‘Green’ even if they can’t tell the difference between blue and green!
The proposal for letters in LA was mostly to do with 26 letters allowing more for future expansion than the maybe 10 colours they could eke out of the current system. And the rest was the issue that the line names are given as ‘Red’, ‘Purple’, ‘Gold’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Green’ with a large proportion of the population naming those colours as ‘Roja’, ‘Morada’/’Púrpura’, ‘Oro’, ‘Azul’ and ‘Verde’.
It should also be noted that the ‘Expo Line’ retained its construction name rather than being named ‘Aqua Line’ after its colour, and that the Aqua dots have black letter ‘E’s in them as it was a silly colour choice (even though it was temporary and will soon become part of the Gold Line) for a line that shares its inner section with the Blue line: the colours are close so they had to alter their branding to help the colour-blind. They do care about colour-blindness, even if they choose colours as names for lines.
@Graham H – the ‘then we’d have to provide entirely monochrome maps’ notion has lead to Manchester Metrolink having only a terrible map that’s very hard to use whatever your ability to see colour is. It isn’t even monochromatic, being slightly easier to understand if you can tell the colours of the small blobs in the centre apart as you don’t have to try and read the even-smaller letters.
Even colour-blind people complain that unofficial maps modelled on the old official maps that showed routes with individual lines in different colours are far easier to use than the offical one that marks them by putting arrows at termini and tiny boxes in the centre.
SI, Graham, et al
Interesting comments. I am not severely colour blind and can distinguish between most basic colours. The Underground map has never been a problem as the shades are different. Some maps in Modern Railways and Rail cause problems but I can live with that. I can even see traffic lights safely – passed the medical for LT bus driving many years ago. I have always liked numbers though!
@Jim Jordan/Si – yes, you can produce monochrome maps with differentiated patterning, but again, there seems to be a practical limit to what is possible. The old London Connections map came in a monochrome version which was quite terrible unless you had 10 minutes to spare and a handy magnifying class — “Were those white diamonds or white circles within the route line?” And so on. I declare myself to be an unashamed alphabetist but I know others have reservations about that.
A quick search online sheweth that alphabetist is someone who is prejudiced against people who’s names start with a letter near the end of the alphabet. For instance a person who selects Andrews and Bills over Xaviers and Zahras.
Perchance alphabeticist, whilst having no definitive internet definition (for I could not wait more than 0.0034 seconds), would be a better term.
@LBM – 🙂 I would never be prejudiced against people on alphabeticist grounds!
@ Phil
Lisbon also uses colours and images:
azul – seagull
amarela – sunflower
verde – boat
vermelha – compass
Apart from the compass, the images suit thecolurs well.
@WW As requested, I’ll keep it brief. I doubt there is anyone who walks the entire length of Oxford St for their shopping trip. They pick the tube station that’s closest to the shops they are interested in and go with that.
Online commerce is taking an ever-bigger slice out of retail and schemes like this are sorely needed if shopping in person is to remain viable competition.
re: Oxford Street,
If you look at some of the old bus maps from 40-50 years ago bus routes did use Wigmore St. However the use of Wigmore Street by buses will likely be resisted by WCC & residents, AFAIK there was hard resistance to buses being diverted along there when parts of Oxford Street were closed for the water / gas / electric mains upgrades to accommodate crossrail works 7 years ago. Diversions were investigated to the north and south of Oxford Street but so many didn’t work because they cant take the size of modern buses and because of the wholesale changes to one way streets required.
On the Uber ad, the article says [Uber] “mostly ferries around single passengers in automobiles” – not so, it also often ferries hot air (=travelling with zero passengers), so my suspicion is that their average occupancy, like taxis, is well below a single passenger…
http://www.cityam.com/273883/tube-repair-work-delayed-due-exodus-transport-london-agency
Recent tightening on IR35 rules has apparently seen a big impact on it’s Bakerloo upgrade programme.
To be pedantic, I don’t think the essence of the IR35 rules have changed. What did change is the government and HMRC approach to compliance with those rules, especially in organisations that are largely taxpayer funded.
On a vaguely transport related aside, this tougher compliance regime is also one of the factors behind the recent Ryanair pilot shortage. Previously about 50% of Ryanair pilots were supposedly “self employed” contractors. Now that HMRC (and most other tax bodies across the EU) are challenging how on earth a pilot of a scheduled airline could ever be self employed – many of the affected pilots have chosen to no longer engaged on that basis.
@disgusted
“If you look at some of the old bus maps from 40-50 years ago bus routes did use Wigmore St. ”
Buses were diverted from Wigmore Street in June 1972, coinciding with the closure of Oxford Street to general traffic.
http://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/30th-june-1972/20/through-traffic-ban-for-oxford-street
Ian Armstrong’s bus route website suggests that the only routes using Wigmore Street at that time were the 59 and 159, so it is fitting that the 139 (which took over the north-western section of the 159 when it was split in 1992) is one of the two routes which will mark the end of Wigmore Street’s 36 year busless interlude.
@timbeau – this just reinforces my suspicion that someone in LBL has a long memory and a fondness for bus route history (as in the 207/607 combo and the renumbering of the 2B into the 82,and so on).
@ Graham H – I suspect any “oldies” left in TfL buses are even now being shoo-ed out of Palestra with a big broom. Many many decades worth of history, knowledge and experience has departed TfL in the last few years. I doubt we shall see too many more “nods to history” in the bus network as the brave new world takes shape. Let’s us hope we also don’t see too much repeating of history’s errors like “bus reshaping” – ironically a buzz phrase in the new Transport Strategy.
Oh what fun we’re doing colour blindness again! I am colourblind despite having managed to confound LT’s doctors and also pass the Met Police colour blindness test. Don’t ask! All I will say is that while colour no doubt helps a lot of people the more intricate and involved a network is then the harder it is for me to cope. London I have little issue with but then I know the tube map inside out and upside down so never have to use one. Haven’t quite learned the sequence of Crossrail stops west of Paddington yet but I have no issues with TfL Rail or Overground networks either. It’s just the TOC networks that are a relative mystery.
Paris can be a nightmare as network density and thus “line overlaps” on the map are far greater than in London. Tokyo’s map is really horrible despite nice touches like numbered stations by line and line codes incoporated into the station numbering. I am sure some of the difficulty sits with alongside a relatively poor understanding of Tokyo’s geography. I find maps become easier to use once I can broadly understand how areas / districts (and their stations) relate to one another.
Some bus maps are also pretty horrible to use if they use excessive colour coding or branding. Not only are the maps blown out of scale where routes overlap but the “wrong” matching of colours beside one another can make the map impossible to use. I take the earlier point that a single solution for all people with “colour sight” issues is impossible but simpler is better, space between coloured lines is helpful and I really don’t mind if people want to use line names / codes / numbers provided it’s done consistently and carries off the map and on to the network itself in a consistent and accurate way. I think rail tends to do this far better than buses but having a fixed infrastructure tends to help matters.
@ Graham H 14 November 2017 at 17:37
@timbeau – this just reinforces my suspicion that someone in LBL has a long memory and a fondness for bus route history (as in the 207/607 combo and the renumbering of the 2B into the 82,and so on).
I happen to know that when the 430 was introduced, it gained the ’30’ in a conscious echo of / tribute to the old 30.
@PHIL not just Mexico City. The reason each station on some of the older London tube lines has a different tiling pattern was to help the illiterate as well.
Los Angeles only has 5 (soon to be 6) rail lines at the moment but I still don’t see why they couldn’t go with numbers or letters. It can only help.
Interestingly, I learned last night that GTR/Thameslink have numbered their future routes (running from 2018) as Nos. 1-12, at least internally.
Where do I catch the orange line again?
On a general point, I’d always assumed that trams are far cheaper to construct than tubes (deep, not c&c), but given the levels of disruption seen around the UK when tram lines are built is that actually the case?
@EJ “Los Angeles only has 5 (soon to be 6) rail lines”
That should be 6 (soon to be 7 for a period then back to 6). Red, Purple, Blue, Green, Gold and Expo is 6. The Crenshaw/LAX line (Pink or Brown?) will open in 2019 to make 7. The Regional Connector that will merge the Expo line into the Gold (and extend the Blue), taking it back to 6 in 2021.
The Orange (to answer your question Alison, North Hollywood is probably the easiest place to catch it if you want LA’s Orange Line, rather than another city’s) and Silver Bus Rapid Transit Lines add another 2 lines in the naming scheme.
@ Graham H
” this just reinforces my suspicion that someone in LBL has a long memory and a fondness for bus route history ”
Observe the circuitous route of the 281 – still faithful to the memory of London’s last trolleybus route by following the ghosts of the wires that were superseded in 1962 – not to mention the tramlines that became redundant in 1931 when it became London’s first trolleybus route!
@ Alison – trams and light rail are cheaper to build and run. The problem is that the UK has out of date governing legislation, very few people in any sort of authority who understand light rail properly and we don’t know how to plan them properly. There is no doubt that there is street level disruption and it can be very disruptive if the utility companies decide the tram builders should give them nice new drains, pipes and ducts for free to cover up for their decades long neglect. Barring a few very large sites then the building of Crossrail has been “invisible” to a lot of people although the road network impacts and delays have been very severe indeed in some locations. If they’d been building Crossrail on the surface then the impacts would have been huge.
For all the woes and screaming in Edinburgh over the building of its tram line you’d hardly know it happened now. The line’s up and running and seems very popular – usually the way with these schemes because most people adjust to changed circumstances.
Even the USA has vastly more experience at building, extending and operating light rail than the UK has. One small benefit of their system of devolved state level tax raising powers. LA has some small additional advantage in that at least some of the alignments used for their system are the old abandoned “Red Car” alignments from the early 20th century when LA had a massive and efficient light rail and inter-urban system that was closed down progressively due to worsening congestion, pressure to build huge freeways and and also the buying out of rail transit systems to then close them down and convert them to diesel buses. A range of “road lobby” businesses were accused of backing / forming companies that bought out street car systems then closed them down and then ensured their businesses benefitted from sales of new buses, fuel etc. The film “Who killed Roger Rabbit” is loosely based on these accusations.
The DLR opened with the red and green lines. It desperately needs a colour coded system diagram today!
@Taz
I’m not sure if you are aware, but TfL recently published a DLR map which distinguishes between the different DLR services being operated, in various shades of blue-green (or teal if you will). Not easy to distinguish the lines unless right up close to the map, and not helpful at all for those with colour perception problems.
Unfortunately none of these DLR ‘routes’ are named or numbered, so one presumes that they are identified, Parisien Métro style, by their termini – for example “Bank – Woolwich Arsenal”.
But it is a start. One wonders what is taking TfL so long, as they are usually very keen on clear route finding and signage.
@ LBM – I suspect there is some reluctance to adopt colour too widely on the DLR in case it turns into demands for adoption on the wider tube map where it’d be difficult to incorporate. Similarly I can see the same sort of argument about trying to subdivide the Overground map into different colours for the different services. I also think there may be a reluctance to adopt letters and numbers for rail services to avoid clutter on maps or confusion with bus route numbering.
I do understand and appreciate all the wide ranging debate about logicality and all the rest of it but we come back to the basic point about whether the current TfL system of identity and wayfinding demonstrably and materially deters travel or confuses people. I’ve seen no evidence that it does.
@WW – I know you and I won’t agree on the question of LO and DLR numbering, but I’m not sure the bus route number clash is a serious issue. They aren’t shown (usually) on the same map, and the punters will know very clearly that one system is accessed by segregated station and the other from the street. The problem doesn’t seem to concern the punters in eastern Europe where it is quite common to number bus, trolleybus and tram routes in separate series starting at 1. (Tallinn, for example, used to have a route 1 for each mode). I suppose one might compromise by having routes with a letter for the trunk, followed by a number differentiator for the variants – few bus routes have this letter/number format, and these tend to be in area clusters for obvious reasons.
@Graham H, WW
San Francisco uses letters for streetcar routes, and numbers for bus routes.
Alison & WW
You have omitted the unfortunate “fact” ( or observation or whatever) that Trams, though significanlty cheaper ( assuming no political interference a la Edinburgh) are, err UNFASHIONABLE in these lands. There are also those, like Bromley council, who appear to have an unreasoning hate of them, based on no facts whatsoever.
[ Please note all the qualifiers in the statements above? ]
The clear fact that trams work in Paris & all across the Netherlands & Germany ( etc, etc. ) cuts no ice whatsoever, I’m afraid, as opinons are much more important – & I hope that people will please excuse the somewhat cynical snark there ….
@LBM – the late and much lamented Belgian SNCV took the numbering to new heights, with routes marked by a letter reflecting the terminus (thus L = Londerzeel ), a differentiater for variants (thus L2, or perhaps Lf or whatever), and a short working indictator – with the number displayed with a diagonal red line through it – so L2 barre.. I don’t think it necessary to go that far….
@ Graham H – I don’t have violent objections to any reasonable system of numbering of public transport networks. As you rightly say a wide variety of systems apply across the world and on different modes. As with anything people learn to cope with what is put in front of them even if it is somehow suboptimal in the eyes of “experts”. My issue with the repeated challenges about London is the lack of evidence / complaint from the users of the system that it is unusable or bewildering. If such exists then it would be useful to see it summarised and to get TfL’s response to it and if they consider improvement is required. It would give the debate a reasonable starting point rather than just tossing individual opinion back and forth which is what we get every time “enthusiasts” discuss maps and route / service numbering. 😉
I’d put the comments of visitors and tourists to one side where they have the additional challenge of possibly not knowing the city’s geography / structure. I think we all struggle in new places to get a grasp of where transport runs and if there is a language barrier to deal with. These challenges are not the same for most people who live and work in cities and commute by public transport. My other concern about trying to change the presentation of services in London is that it would likely cost quite a lot of money to do it properly given the vast numbers of signs, line diagrams, in car information plus all of the audio and visual information systems. We simply do not have the money for such large scale changes and I am afraid there are vastly more valuable things to spend scarce resources on. Coping with the introduction of “Crossrail” over a 18 month period from May next year will be a big enough challenge.
@Graham H
We already have two networks with numbering systems which duplicate each other, and bus routes 2 and 3 are not far from the tram routes with the same numbers.
@Greg
“Bromley council, who appear to have an unreasoning hate of [trams]”
Ironic, given that the borough has the third largest tram network in London.
Timbeau
IIRC it’s all on reserved track.
[Rest of comment deleted as totally irrelevant anywhere on London Reconnections site. PoP]
Timbeau,
Bromley doesn’t have a tram network. It has some tramway route mileage belonging to a wider network not confined to any borough.
I would add that Bromley may have the third largest tram route mileage of any borough but the number of occasions that the tram network impinges on the highway in Bromley (e.g. at-grade crossings, street running) is the same as it does in 30 other London boroughs. That was a consequence of an initial absolute refusal by Bromley to have anything to do with trams. As the route eventually taken did not impinge on anything the council had any control over, they were ultimately powerless to do anything to block them.
@Timbeau – re duplicated route numbers. Am I right that in the mid-90s First CentreWest managed to operate two routes with the same number in different places at the same time? The route is/are the R1. One was in Bromley, operated by the Orpington Buses subsidiary and the other in Uxbridge. Can anyone add to my possibly imperfect memory?
Re the consultation on a possible Rotherhithe to Isle of Dogs pedestrian/cycle bridge.
The linked article (on IanVisits) gives a lot of focus to a tunnel option. That is mildly misleading, as the tunnel option is dismissed in the tfl consultation documentation. Furthermore, the tunnel option discussed in the IanVisits article is a precast structure sitting on the river bed – I don’t see how that design is feasible given the draft of some of the cruise ships that still use this section of the navigable river.
If you go to the tfl consultation and survey – there is no tunnel option in those documents.
@WW _ entirely accept your points – especially the one about cost – for that reason alone, I would begin any changes on those self-contained systems such as LO and DLR (and perhaps the tramway); it may be that is all that needs attention for the moment.
@timbeau – there are a good many towns which have duplicate numbers already. Basingrad used to hold some sort of prize with two routes 1 and a “First” and a “Premier”, and of course, many operators such as Stagecoach have routes with similar numbers in different towns (as in, and as a descendant of quite often, municipal transport).
@Graham H – this link may be of interest:
http://markhadfield.typepad.com/that_gormandizer_man/2009/03/how-london-buses-are-numbered-tfl-come-up-trumps.html
@Jim R -nice to have one’s suspicions confirmed! Bus route numbers seem to have originated in London with Vanguard in 1906 but it’s not clear whether they were actually displayed until 1908 when the LGOC amalgamated with them and with the London Road Car co (who had used letters for routes for internal purposes since about 1906.).. From 2 November 1908, the combined organisation ran routes 1-20 (12 not used), with 1-10 being the ex-vanguard routes. Many of these are recognisable as the ancestors of today’s routes – eg the 1 from Cricklewood to Elephant, (now moved SEwards, of course).. These early Vanguard numbers simply seem to have reflected the sequence of opening as motorised operations. The Oxford Street proposals will break some really long standing route numbers.*
Horsebus routes weren’t officially numbered but I have an 1898 Baedeker which lists them all with numbers (but that may be just Baedeker being Teutonically positivist).
_____________________________________________________________________________
* Some time ago, there was a discussion about what was the oldest London bus route in continuous operation -the competitors appear to be either the horsedrawn predecessor of the 11 or the predecessor of the 16.
Keeping the route numbers as stable as possible is vital. They help to imprint geography in the mind the same way as the national road numbering does across the country. I don’t have an encyclopaedic memory, but my association of numbers with certain streets is sufficient that visitors who travel with me have expressed surprise when I say a particular bus – quite remote from home and not a habitually travelled route – will get us where we want to go, without referring to a map.
As for fixed rail numbering, whilst agreeing with the above comments that there are more important fish to fry, I have probably said it elsewhere that INAT has sorted it out very elegantly on this map http://www.inat.fr/metro/london/… it doesn’t contradict the existing setup but satisfies those who like the clarity of a number or letter at the end of the line. If the world were really that bothered, one could imagine an evolutionary rollout of this solution without causing confusion.
NickBXN
Halfway there, at best!
Having the Cheshunt/Enfield/Chingford services all having the same route number ain’t a good idea (IMHO)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
@Nickbxn
The INAT map seems to have missed a trick by omitting the Tramlink routings, whch are of course numbered 1-4.
@littlejohn
It is not particularly unusual for the same operator to duplicate numbers in two areas – although it would have been odd if they were both TfL services, this was not the case here. Ian Armstrong’s bus pages has the story. The U1 (previously Uxbridge- Rickmansworth) was split in 1994, the section between Ruislip and Rickmansworth becoming a Herts CC sponsored route numbered R1.
More confusing is when separate operators in the same area have duplicate numbers. Even in the days of municipal monopolies, it was quite common for National Bus company subsidiaries operating to out-of-town destinations to use numbers which duplicated the local ones – in my home city we had dark green No 7s and light green No 7s following each other down the same road all the way to the city boundary!
@Timbeau – thanks. I seem to recall a few years ago an operator (unsuccessfully?) taking action against another for ‘passing off’. I think the allegation was that by using the same route number and colour scheme on a similar service to the complainant the public was being mislead.
@ Littlejohn – we may be thinking of different examples but IIRC Busways (in Tyne and Wear) challenged the route numbering and livery used by a new competitor called Welcome Buses. Their livery was bright yellow just as Busways (and its predecessor companies) used. Welcome were forced to amend their livery and route numbers.
One thing that several large scale bus companies was paint buses in the liveries of companies that they or their predecessors had used to prevent new entrants “evoking the past” by using versions of old liveries. Again a reason why Busways used “Blue Bus Services” and “Favourite” as trading names with appropriate liveries as these were the old Newcastle Corporation and another business taken over many decades earlier. I suspect there may be other examples elsewhere in the country in the post deregulation era.
@Littlejohn
I’m fairly certain that the “passing off” action was successfully used by Transit Holdings in Portsmouth, I believe against Provincial buses. This would have been in the early 1990s, so there seems to be little record of it easily found on the internet.
WW, MoK – thank you both. It was some time ago, and my memory gets less reliable every year. I had thought the action failed (learned judge said the public were not stupid or something similar) but probably I am just mis-remembering.
@timbeau – you shouldn’t be surprised at NBC route number duplication. They had no obvious role in relation to their operating subsidiaries other than financial oversight (where their role was to ensure that the taxpayer was defrauded) and procurement (sometimes – with a similar objective, thinking of the disastrous Leyland National). [I write as the unfortunate who had the NBC desk in DTp in the late ’70s, where we struggled to make sense of the portfolio. Route planning/subsidy was supposed to be something that the local authorities did leaving NBC as a mere contractor – a relationship that satisfied neither party (nor Ministers, when they chose)].
@Graham H: “where their role was to ensure that the taxpayer was defrauded“
Are you sure?
Quite sure! (I have told the story of Victoria coach station before – a fairly typical NBC scam – so won’t repeat myself… then there was the saga of the Leyland B2 doubledecker – ugh))
WRT the late R1 (Uxbridge), I’m not entirely sure Ian Armstrong’s site gives a full and fair picture of it (though absolutely it is strictly correct, and given his location he will no doubt have had first hand experience).
Being a First route operated from Uxb garage, it shared red busses with their LT/TfL routes, and for quite a while there weren’t any active attempts to market a distinction between it and other routes under different contractual arrangements. This was a time of paper tickets, bench seats, and step entrances, but lasted well into the GLA devolution and the now forgotten concept of ‘integrated transport’, not to mention renumbering to R21. There might have been acceptance of travelcards, and indeed, it was marked on bus maps and in guides as a London Busses’ route. Unlike, say, the 335, which also used red busses from Uxb (don’t know allocation), but was almost always portrayed as a green route.
Ben, yes I am sure that the bus map of the time listed 2 x route R1, both as red routes, which is why it stands out. I have been looking through my collection of old maps etc but I haven’t come across the relevant one (yet). I lived in Harefield at the time and occasionally rode on the UX R1.
WW The busways example was a nightmare and benefit alternately. The new buses were renumbered 400 and 120. Then busways added competing 40C and 12C. The 12C and 120 (and the original 12) all queued outside my bedroom window at the traffic lights and we’re noisy and smelly. On the other hand you rarely waited more than a couple of minutes for a bus!
@ Purley Dweller – I see you had direct “experience” of the “benefits” of the free market in action. I assume that you were resident to the east of the City Centre in a district named with the letter “W”. Of course those busy and lucrative cross city routes in Newcastle have been a battleground more than once – Welcome and Tyne and Wear Omnibus Co (TWOC) all tried and then in the Stagecoach era they “competed” with themselves with “Magic Bus” low cost routes alongside the usual one.
WW – Other side. In Fenham. Magic bus was after my time.
Probably the most common question I hear as a bus passenger anywhere is whether the bus is going in the desired direction (or the exclamation when someone discovers they’ve been travelling in the wrong direction). So should all bus route identification include it, with bus stops marked accordingly? 73N and 73S, for example?
@ Alison W – the problem with that, as with some Tube Lines, is that direction varies along the route. In my view the 73 is not really a N-S route at all. It is NE-SW ish given it now terminates at Oxford Circus. There are, IMO, simply too many variables in the network to use directional letters. What on earth would you do with the N253 for example which goes north, east and south in one direction and north, west and south in the other as it’s “inverted – U” shaped? A fair few other examples like that in the network – 331 from Ruislip to Uxbridge via Northwood and Harefield. We also have circular routes in Harrow which are at least differentiated as to direction by their route numbers.
I accept people can get lost / be confused etc but in London there is usually reasonable info if only people make the effort to check it. There is also a driver to ask and it’s very rare that a driver can’t help even if people need another route entirely. I can’t see that adding more letters to route numbers keeps things simple and it’s another load of cost that TfL clearly cannot afford. Would people have a clue what a N381E was or a N253S or a W19E or even just a 74SW? One or two places, like the West Midlands have a very long standing, and thus understood by locals, practice of using letters to denote short trips, circulars or other oddities. However it’s not spread beyond that area.
WW & Alison
Of course, until quite recently, certainly in London, the bus carried not only its final destination, but also significant stops along its route.
Now, of course they don’t,
[Opinion that adds nothing snipped. PoP]
Alison
It would help if the “via” blind – where it exists – updated itself as the journey progressed so as to show only those places the bus had yet to visit. It adds no value to show “Oxford Circus”, for example, if the bus has already passed through Oxford Circus and won’t be there again until its return journey.
Greg,
Irrelevant comment as having the intermediate destinations did not help identify which direction stop to use.
First, you need to chose the stop before the bus comes. Second, The intermediate destinations (on Routemasters and most other buses at any rate) were static and did not tell you the direction of the route.
Friday reads, like other topics, are not an excuse to bring out personal hobby-horses.
@ Greg and others. I think we are being a little unfair to TfL. Each bus stop now indicates the direction of travel such as “towards Wimbledon” etc plus it also tells you the name of the stop which depending on circumstance can provide an additional level of clarity. Each bus stop normally displays all the relevant timetables each of which includes a line map showing all the significant stops and the stops on the direction travel are usually indicated by an emboldened black line. Add to that there is normally a spider map (inside over 7000 bus shelters) to assist orientation plus over 2000 shelters have count down displays indicating the final destination. If you have a smart phone you can use apps like Citymapper or Transit which using data provided by TfL indicate on maps which bus stop to use depending on preferred direction of travel.
On the bus itself the drivers will normally assist if asked plus the iBus displays and announcement provide further reassurance on route and direction of travel.
I am not saying there is not scope for further improvement but frankly as one who in the old days was averse to using buses precisely because of the paucity of information I normally am very confident in using them.
All in all I have to say I endorse Walthamstow Writers opinion given above
I must confess I would like to see more bus shelters and count down machines although I suspect TfL woukd be opposed primarily on cost but there is no doubt the count down displays are a very effective way of directly informing the travelling public and in an ideal world they would be present at every bus stop.
The one thing we have lost are the old geographic bus route maps which for consulting at bus shelters were almost unusable.
@WW – 🙂 To mention the disastrous Bassom system of route numbering would probably provoke a tsunami of recollections, although history fans will note that the f suffix for Epsom race days survived many decades after Bassom had been put right and order restored. (Another example of antiquarianism in LBL). For a modern-day experience of suffix confusion,I suggest a visit to Dublin where successive reorganisations of the bus network (no route ever being withdrawn…) have led to suffixes as far at least as H.
More seriously, your point about directions is well made – even (especially) the Jubilee Line has difficulties with east/west, north/south.
RichardB
Each bus stop normally displays all the relevant timetables each of which includes a line map showing all the significant stops and the stops on the direction travel are usually indicated by an emboldened black line (etc)
Oh dear, you are obviously unaware of Diamond Geezer’s long history of mis-postings, absences & complete misdirection at “Bus Stop “M” then?
[ For those not aware of this, at times very funny saga, go over to “DG”s site & search for it…. ]
Interestingly the unilink buses in Southampton have a different suffix letter to denote their destination (e.g. the U1A goes to the Airport and the U1C goes to the City Centre).
It might sound superfluous (“Why not just check the destination blind?”) but it was actually a great asset to system navigability for both new users and locals/regulars, especially in situations where buses in both directions stop at the same stop (like Canary Wharf).
The Unilink sub-brand of buses in Southampton use the end destination to differentiate direction. So U1C, U2C and U6C buses go to the City Centre, U1A to the Airport, U1E Eastleigh (these are specials) U2B Basset, U6H the General Hospital. This is better than cardinal directions, but still not great. And the U1N is the Friday/Saturday night service from the nightlife to the student residential areas (and on to Eastleigh) in both directions.
The cardinal directions on the tube are very far from great – I used to travel from Amersham to Northfields, and went in all four directions: southeast (sorry ‘South’) to Harrow, west (sorry ‘North’) to Rayners Lane, south (sorry ‘East’) to Acton Town and west (actually ‘West’) to Northfields. You also have directions not matching with the same platform – the southbound Met is the eastbound H&C is the clockwise Circle.
These things happen all the time in North America on their road network where they use cardinal directions on every route (circular ones sometimes get inner/outer, and never clock/not). US101’s northern end hugs the coast of the Olympic Peninsular, and at the large town at the top just flips direction to actually match geography rather than having 60 miles of heading south signed as ‘North’ – still far from ideal. At least in the UK, we’re pragmatic eg the ‘2 and ’20 routes have traffic information given as ‘Coastbound’ or ‘Londonbound’ carriageways.
@Greg I am not sure what is the point you are making. My post was written to indicate that TfL has provided a series of tools and mechanisms for buses to indicate direction of travel primarily at bus stops but also onboard buses and also in cyberspace via various apps. I did qualify that by saying “normally” which indicates an absence of 100% compliance. I am aware that for example sometimes timetables are missing from bus stops but that is not the norm in my experience
I suspect Diamond Geezer travels more widely than I do and he clearly has observed derogations from what should be the standard but proportionately do such lapses indicate that correct information is not normally provided? My own experience in south west and central London is that this is not the case but I accept my experience may be anecdotal but nevertheless I do not normally observe such lapses. Do we have hard evidence that travel information provided at bus stops is routinely absent or incorrect? If so do we know the percentage of affected stops?
In the absence of such data I am willing to give TfL the benefit of the doubt as I think direction of travel information is normally present and correct but undoubtedly that there is room for improvement.
Quite frankly I’d just wish people would engage brain first, before catching the first bus they saw.
It’s not exactly rocket science….
RichardB
Your call for more & accurate data is well-placed.
For instance, something I thought pointless has proven a boon – the “countdown” bus indicators.
I suspect that incidents of “Bus Stop M” type with either completely missing or plain wrong information are somewhere in the 2-5% range – but, as you say – no data.
SHLR: Like (I presume) you, I find choosing the right bus pretty easy, whether it’s in London or Beijing. But I have been brought up doing it, with parents with the same instincts, even causing difficulties for my parents when riding free (then only available to under-3-year-olds) by reading the adverts out loud.
But people are not all the same. The information provision needs to be aimed at the least literate, least geographically adept, including those whose early reading was in a radically different script.
And when I have got on the wrong bus, in spite of my advantages in such respects, it has typically been because, out of all the available sources of information, I have plumped for the one which happens to be suffering from a slight glitch. Not because it was “the first bus I saw”.
@ Richard B – I pretty much agree with your observations, The Diamond Geezer saga of Bus Stop M (a stop at Bow Church) was caused by the very long term works to install cycle lanes and then rework them and then undertake works to improve cycle and pedestrian safety at Bow Roundabout. Clearly there were multiple phases to the work and things slipped, for whatever reason, in terms of bus stop information and presentation. It is TfL’s good fortune or bad luck, depending on your stance, to have DG living nearby who can blog the full horrors and later successes of one bus stop.
On the wider point there certainly has been a phase where bus stop information was less than ideal and below past standards. I suspect this was a combination of staff cuts, reorganisation causing distractions and a high volume of road works / events which meant it was very difficult to keep info up to date and to remove it once works were finished. From my local wanderings it seems to have improved of late but then there are fewer works going on that are highly disruptive. This may be about to change though as some more cycle lane works are happening and we have Oxford St pedestrianisation looming. However places like Victoria should revert to normality in a few months once the tube stn works are finished and other developments are completed.
One area that is still not working is actually diversions being signposted (for drivers) on the ground but that info not reaching electronic systems for use via the TfL website / social media etc. I can cite recent local examples where diversions were required due to road works or an event and these were signposted for bus drivers. Not a squeak on the TfL website when I went to check so something in the process isn’t getting local info to Centrecomm for data entry into Countdown / Twitter / Real Time bus info. There are also examples where TfL’s own “Traffic status” page shows road works very clearly and accurately but the impact on the bus network and bus stops either isn’t shown at all or is completely wrong. Recent works on Woodford Avenue are an example – TfL showed all the n/b stops as closed even though the road was open and it was the s/b stops that were inaccessible as the road was being resurfaced. Really not sure how that happened as one glance on the “jam cams” would have shown what was happening. Given all the control rooms are co-located there’s little excuse for those sorts of errors.
London is still pretty well provided for in terms of information. There is a structured hierarchy of signs and information and is typically well maintained. Having less change to the bus network also takes some of the pressure off the infrastructure and customer comms people. All people need to do is actually read what is available or else ask someone. Local people in London generally know where their buses go.
Current dates of ‘Spider Maps’ available from TfL website (first one from each borough)
Barking – 9/17
Barnet – 2/15
Bexley – 9/15
Brent – 9/16
Bromley – 7/17
Camden – 10/14
City – 9/17
Croydon – 10/15
Ealing – 9/16
Enfield – 9/16
Greenwich – 9/15
Hackney – 1/17
Hammersmith – 10/14
Haringey – 6/16
Harrow – 2/15
Havering – 10/12
Hillingdon – 7/17
Houslow – 2/12
Islington – 5/17
Kensington – 09/17
Kingston – 10/12
Lambeth – 06/17
Lewisham – 08/15
Merton – 03/11
Newham – 02/16
Redbridge – 08/13
Richmond – 08/14
Southwark – 9/15
Sutton – 3/11
Tower- 9/17
Waltham – 8/16
Wandsworth – 1/14
Westminster – 9/17
So, forgive the poor methodology, but quite a range of dates. Some as far back as 6½ years ago, some from a couple of months back. Given some places will not have changed at all, some updating will be unnecessary. Since spider maps only show direct routes available from a stop/area, this must also reduce the amount of updating needed, as far fewer routes are on each sheet (this is, of course, completely disingenuous for the travelling public). My point would be that if you see a likely faded, six year old map at a shabby bus stop, how much faith would you have that its correct and up to date?
Further, I note some errors on maps that are long standing. The spider map for Ickenham, eg, currently still contains typos and errors likely from some sort of auto generation. Its two years old and has been displayed at every bus shelter in the area.
So, forgive me @RichardB, but I fear your opinion, whilst qualified as you point out, is perhaps too much of a generalisation given the variable experience had across TfL’s 10,000’s stops.
There is a Facebook group dedicated to London Busses poor publicity.
FWT much lamented.