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Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

michalpaszkiewicz.co.uk

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Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#31

Post by incone123 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #25
GloucesterBoy wrote: post #2

There has recently been a big problem in London for the elderly - many bus stops have been removed and replaced with bicycle lanes, meaning the elderly have to move a considerable distance to their nearest bus stop. There was also an issue that TfL was removing seats from bus stops to stop 'yobbery', but leaving the elderly without a place to sit while waiting: https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/elderly-forced-to-st…

Wait, since when are TFL removing stops for Cycle lanes? Wouldn't they need to re-engineer the whole road as that would mean moving the pavement as well?

They are indeed reengineering. Have a look at Westminster Bridge Road south end at the entrance to St Thomas's Hospital. It's on Google Street view.

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#32

Post by GloucesterBoy »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #28

"Some buses in London also have "Hail and Ride" zones, where a bus can be stopped with a wave on the hand at any point on the route.—It certainly wouldn't be practical in urban areas where the bus could be stopped every few meters." Funny the author writes that but these sorts buses do exist in certain cities like İstanbul. A special class of privately operated 'mini-buses' run along a predefined and long route, pick…

It worked really well in London while it had Routemaster buses with the back door that was always open... it meant there was almost no delay when getting on a bus.

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#33

Post by illiarian »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #28

"Some buses in London also have "Hail and Ride" zones, where a bus can be stopped with a wave on the hand at any point on the route.—It certainly wouldn't be practical in urban areas where the bus could be stopped every few meters." Funny the author writes that but these sorts buses do exist in certain cities like İstanbul. A special class of privately operated 'mini-buses' run along a predefined and long route, pick…

> but these sorts buses do exist in certain cities like İstanbul. A special class of privately operated 'mini-buses' run along a predefined and long route, picking up and dropping passengers at practically any point along the route.

And they are very, very, very bad for traffic in general. Because they haphazardly weave in and out of traffic, and stop unpredictably, often blocking several lanes, to pick up people

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#34

Post by ml_basics »

> Some buses in London also have "Hail and Ride" zones, where a bus can be stopped with a wave on the hand at any point on the route.

Unfortunately in my experience growing up in London, such zones really operated with informal unmarked stops. The buses would only stop at these points and would drive past someone hailing between them.

So it was no different from the usual system, except the bus stops were not marked and therefore useless to anyone not familiar with the bus route.

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#35

Post by 867-5309 »

the whole article I thought they were measuring distances travelled between each stop. then, right at the end of the article, the admission they were using point-to-point measurements. makes any analysis seem a bit pointless? especially considering the amount of one-way systems in the city

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#36

Post by MagnumOpus »

cjrp wrote: post #27
realjhol wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't usually stop that often because half the time people aren't pushing the button every stop. In central areas where demand is high, busses usually come every ~5-minutes. Even further out in the suburbs, the wait times are 8-10 minutes. Bus rides are £1.75. You can take as many busses in a day, and it automatically caps at £5.25. You don't need coins, you pay using contactless credit card, or oyster card prep…

> Unless there is service disruption I find the bus is at least twice as fast as walking, typically a lot faster. Anecdata, but I can say the opposite is true in central London (London Bridge to Liverpool Street, for example) during rush hour. The bus takes about 20 mins on a good day, and I can walk it in the same time.

Agreed, but that is really only true for some very specific sections at very specific times (5pm rush hour around the City fringe and Westminster) -- even in rush hour I would say that the 2x rule of thumb works in general.

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#37

Post by leoedin »

eptcyka wrote: post #15
smcl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble making sense of this. It sounds like you want to say you won't take the bus for a journey under 200 metres - which is fine. But the meaning of your sentence is something like: if you want to travel 2 km and the bus stops every 200 metres means you won't take the bus because it would cost too much? How come? And how did you arrive at that 200 metre threshold? edit: I completely failed to appreciate…

If the bus stops every 200 meters, it has a chance of stopping 10 times, which takes a lot of time. If the weather isn't prohibitively horrible, I have to wait for the bus to arrive and if there's traffic, chances are I'll be able to reach my destination on foot faster than by bus. It's fine by me, but it seems that I'm just not the target audience for busses.

Nearly every time I think "I can walk quicker than the bus", the bus overtakes me. Even with a bus stop every 200m. The only time I truly can walk quicker than a bus is when it's in complete gridlock traffic.

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#38

Post by IIAOPSW »

TheHumanist wrote: post #30
sum1ren wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me all the more in awe of London's bus network despite the occasional tardiness. I've not played Cities, but interested to know the usual stumbling blocks to build such a system. Too large a city to cover, and too expensive to cover extensively?

It's funny because I believe if a person was to study my gameplay in Cities XL and then also watch me function throughout a day, they would find very clear similarities in my frantic disorganization in general. I believe, probably, it is mostly a 'me' problem. Maybe not, though. I just find it incredibly overwhelming when you get to the point where your citizens are demanding bus stops everywhere. There is already su…

What you need to do is get over the intuition that a transit network is supposed to be random access and point to point. Its not. Some places are more important and more likely than others. Don't fall for the trap of compulsively filling in lines until there's spaghetti everywhere and everything that could meet at the ends does. Have core structures, basic sorts of routes. Be neither radial nor mesh, but rather federated with ample chances to make transfers. Think of it as a plumbing problem. Your primary people flow is between cheap rent and good jobs. Other people flows exists, but its ok to use smaller pipes on that.

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#39

Post by OJFord »

cjrp wrote: post #27
realjhol wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't usually stop that often because half the time people aren't pushing the button every stop. In central areas where demand is high, busses usually come every ~5-minutes. Even further out in the suburbs, the wait times are 8-10 minutes. Bus rides are £1.75. You can take as many busses in a day, and it automatically caps at £5.25. You don't need coins, you pay using contactless credit card, or oyster card prep…

> Unless there is service disruption I find the bus is at least twice as fast as walking, typically a lot faster. Anecdata, but I can say the opposite is true in central London (London Bridge to Liverpool Street, for example) during rush hour. The bus takes about 20 mins on a good day, and I can walk it in the same time.

Especially given if you're not on the bus you don't (probably) have to walk bus stop to bus stop, you go straight to wherever you're going. Lots of little alleys around there too, saving 2x road to the junction and a light change.

Re: Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

#40

Post by richiebful1 »

incone123 wrote: post #31
LatteLazy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, since when are TFL removing stops for Cycle lanes? Wouldn't they need to re-engineer the whole road as that would mean moving the pavement as well?

They are indeed reengineering. Have a look at Westminster Bridge Road south end at the entrance to St Thomas's Hospital. It's on Google Street view.

The bus stop shelter has those awful "leaning seats" where you can't really sit down.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5007804,-0.119582,3a,84.9y,1...

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