4 ms·

In London I get the tube/bus everyday. Each bus idles for 2-3 minutes at every stop, and there are stops every 100-200m, for a 2km bus ride roughly half of the

In London I get the tube/bus everyday. Each bus idles for 2-3 minutes at every stop, and there are stops every 100-200m, for a 2km bus ride roughly half of the time, and fuel, is spent waiting for people to get on and off the bus, with the bottleneck at the front of the bus where you have to tap in your RFID card. The bus system is not generally used by wealthy people (house/rents are way higher near a tube station) I would guess that at least 60-70% of the people on a given bus in London are either over 60 (so not paying), under 18 (paying a reduced rate) or on benefits already (so the government is already paying indirectly). So what is the point in charging? I think you could remove the requirement to pay / tap in on the bus and cut the number of buses running in half, without reducing profitabliity or service significantly. And you'd get better air quality in London as well.

wayanon 8y ago
Your thoughts made me look into London bus demographics and I agree makes sense for rides to be free but I found this saying: 'Over half of day and night bus passengers work full-time (51% and 59% respectively).' p.8 from http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-bus-users-survey.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-bus-users-survey.pdf
- lozenge 8y ago
  It depends on your route. Grandparent sounds like they are bussing in central London. Further out busses are often the fastest route as all the tube lines are headed into the city, but people often want to go in other directions. There are many people further out whose commute is bus then tube as well. Bus stops are 1km apart and the bus might stop for 30 seconds or skip stops entirely.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  On page 17 of that same doc you can see that 67% of day bus riders (higher at night) have a total household income of under 30k GBP, which isn’t enough for a household in London without tax credits or other government support
  - martinald 8y ago
    Not really, I imagine a lot of people are single people living in shared houses.
icebraining 8y ago
Alternatively, you can use the model in Belgium and Luxembourg, where you're still expected to tap, but there's readers all over the bus and you can enter through any door. Of course, that relies much more on trust and/or fear of inspectors.
- ben_w 8y ago
  Or make the fine matches the fare-dodging rate. Or CCTV and face recognition to auto-bill users or fine fare dodgers. That may or may not be good enough to replace user actions like tapping a card reader (Amazon stores are not the whole population, and I don’t know the reliability, thry may be an expensive public beta for all I know), but there are also privacy implications for such systems.
  - the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
    Lots of cities just do spot checks and do better that way. Oslo and Vienna do spot checks for instance and have much higher throughput and need fewer station staff that way and do not want to sacrifice hat.
- mcintyre1994 8y ago
  The DLR in London is already a bit like this, at least some of the stops don't have any barrier and rely on honesty/inspectors to tap your card before you get on or have a valid ticket.
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
Well the tube makes about 50% of its money from fares which is about double the 25% it gets from the government. The rest are things like advertising, renting out real estate, financial plays etc. Consider that London has a ton of people from outside of the city, and tourists. You can go free for residents, but you'd still need an RFID card system for everyone else. Moreover, if just London decided to do this you'd still need an RFID system for transport that goes in/out of the city, e.g. every train station, many buses. In Estonia they still used cards even though it was all free. You essentially need to make the whole country have free public transport, that's a big decision. Hope the UK will get there within 15 years!
- isostatic 8y ago
  > You essentially need to make the whole country have free public transport That would be horrendous. Trains are already crowded enough off-peak. In lieu of more infrastructure (like HS2) the real solution would be to increase the prices to encourage people who are more concerned about price than speed, flexibility, frequency, to take less crowded trains, or other solutions like coaches.
  - 7952 8y ago
    Or just allow a certain number of free miles per day. Ramp up pricing on longer unsustainable commutes. This would mean that the maximum number of people can use the system and prevent abuse.
    - isostatic 8y ago
      Pricing actually drops on long unsustainable commutes. I travel Crewe to London every few weeks, if I want to arrive in London before 11.30, or avoid the 1900-2000 overcrowded 'offpeak' trains, without using the slow train or the loopholes, that's £261 return, or about 90p/mile. If I were to commute every day (and it's only 90 minutes), that would cost £361.90 a week, or 25p per mile (for a monthly ticket it comes down to £1,133.20 for the month -- or under 20p per mile.
  - crispyporkbites 8y ago
isostatic 8y ago
The bottleneck on a busy stop (where say 40 people board) are people getting on, shuffling down the bus, going up the stairs, etc. I believe you're allowed to board in the middle doors too.
- notahacker 8y ago
  yeah, the tapping really isn't the bottleneck that count the correct change was, and many people boarding buses for short distances are using them precisely because they're not that mobile.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    The problem in many cities is often with people who don't use the system all that much. Routine commuters? They probably have a monthly pass of some sort. Even semi-regular users of a service in a city probably have some sort of pay-as-you-go contactless card like Oyster, Clipper, or Charlie. Tourists or rare users? They're liming up at a handful of machines. Can't figure out the options. May be having trouble with language. May be having trouble with payment. Can't choose among the many options. I've been in this latter situation many times. I have my cards and apps for the places I routinely go. For the vast bulk of other places, I'm usually reminded of how difficult these systems can be to navigate--even if I've taken the time to do some homework in advance.
- crispyporkbites 8y ago
  You can board in the middle (eg if with a pram or wheelchair), but then the bus driver will ask you to come to the front of the bus and tap in, while the entire bus has to wait for that.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    I assume that doesn't apply to the "new routemasters"?
jimmytidey 8y ago
There is a similar debate around paying the £7.00 for NHS prescriptions. The vast majority of prescriptions go to elderly, young, pregnant or chronically ill people who don't pay.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  It's £8.80 now. About 10% of prescriptions are paid for, which contributes about 0.5% of the total NHS budget. Prescriptions are free across the board in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The bigger problem IMO is dental charges and the shortage of NHS dentists. The NHS fee for a Band 3 dental procedure (crowns, veneers, bridges etc) is £256.50, which is prohibitively expensive for people on low incomes. Many people can't access NHS dentists at all because of a shortage of providers in their area.
- walshemj 8y ago
  Is that so I still had to pay for my prescriptions (and I was on a lot of meds) with chronic kidney failure for around 2 decades (before I was on dialysis) even when I was on the waiting list. It made sense to buy the annual pre pay card for £104.
stevekemp 8y ago
> there are stops every 100-200m This is true, but it's actually fascinating that this is required for the elderly and immobile. If the stops are too far apart then people have to walk too far to get the bus, and so in practice they don't. I used to feel the same when I lived in Edinburgh, that the stops were too frequent, but despite the stopping/starting it was useful for others. Edinburgh has (had?) a fantastic local bus-service. Definitely the best I've experienced in the UK, cheap, reliable, and an unusually friendly set of drivers.
- crispyporkbites 8y ago
  You need the frequent stops for sure, although perhaps they could make 1 in every 4 buses and express, with limited stops. Either way, if there’s 4 double doors along the whole side of the bus that can be used to board / alight, without a tap in queue, the turnaround time per stop could be 3-4x faster.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  I've often argued half the stops should be marked as disabled/elderly stops. The stops are so frequent, I wouldn't mind walking one stop further at all (or in a few cases even two stops), and I'm really lazy when it comes to physical exercise. Some stops are so close you can recognise people standing at the previous or next one. I would at least like to see a trial, where half the stops (of those which are really close) are marked as meant for disabled/elderly/blind people. Everyone can stand at every stop and the bus will service it, but everyone likes faster transport and hopefully they'll choose to not stand at disabled stops. Some assholes will undoubtedly refuse, but if that happens at one or two stops out of ten or twenty, that's a win. Or, alternatively, only service each stop with every other bus. The lines where there are enough people to have stops every 1 minute walking distance, there are also enough buses (like every 10 minutes) to not have to wait long if you don't want to walk to the next stop. Or you time leaving work so that you're there when your closest stop gets serviced: that's no disadvantage for you and a win for speed.
  - stevekemp 8y ago
    I suspect the average number of stops must be factored into the schedule - such that if the bus stopped at only 50% of the shelters on its route the timetables would need changing. (And of course sometimes a bus will stop when people want to get off, not necessarily because people want to embark.)
mayniac 8y ago
Tube barriers have the same problem, although it's not really environmental. Ever seen Canary Wharf station (jubilee line) at 6pm? Or almost any DLR station where there's only two or three oyster card readers for an entire station? I've heard of people being stuck outside the elevators of the jubilee branch for up to half an hour when the DLR is on strike. Getting rid of the barriers would get people in and out of stations faster, reduce queues and get rid of a lot of redundant station jobs which only exist to get people through the barriers. Actually those last two points may get significant backlash from the British public and the public transport unions respectively..
- orf 8y ago
  Getting rid of the barriers removes the ability to control overcrowding on the platform itself, which at peak times with DLR strikes causes a big headache. You can't just let tens of thousands of people stream into an enclosed space like that without controls.
- lozenge 8y ago
  At Canary Wharf and the ticket barriers and escalators are deliberately kept closed or are going in the "wrong" direction to prevent the platforms from being too full. This way there is room to get off the train even at 6pm when there are a thousand people waiting to get in the train.
baby 8y ago
Your description doesn't reflect mine. I take the bus all the time and see people from the whole spectrum everytime.
smoe 8y ago
Your last paragraph is how it works in Switzerland. There are no checks when entering busses, trams and trains. Busdrivers in cities will usually not let you pay with them but sent you to the ticket machine placed in the middle of the bus. They do send controllers "randomly" to check whether people have valid rides and hand out quite hefty fines if not. So far I have only ever heard the transportation companies complaining loudly about not being able to collect fines from some people, rather than fare dodging itself being considered a big problem.
fyfy18 8y ago
I get the bus everyday (working in Westminster) and there are plenty of other people in suits who do the same. Busses aren’t just for the poor. I get the bus as it provides the fastest route for getting to work (other than cycling). The tube would require me to change then walk, and an Uber would be longer due to traffic (as they can’t use bus lanes). The new Routemasters definitely optimise the loading/unloading speed, hopefully they will be rolled out to new routes. Also all new London busses over the last few years have been hybrid or electric, so idling isn’t that much of an issue now.
agumonkey 8y ago
I wonder how many buses are hybrids. Considering the low regular pace, frequent stops .. braking regeneration would help a lot.
- Symbiote 8y ago
  30% of London's fleet, increasing to 60% by the end of this year. (Plus a few zero emission.) Source: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/buses/improving-buses https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/buses/improving-buses
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    I've read wikipedia since, it seems cities are ramping up. Paris is also making offers for a 1000 e-bus fleet around 2025. Also there are capabuses, China tested them, ultracapacitor based for 3km trips between recharge. Funny.

wayanon 8y ago

Your thoughts made me look into London bus demographics and I agree makes sense for rides to be free but I found this saying: 'Over half of day and night bus passengers work full-time (51% and 59% respectively).' p.8 from http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-bus-users-survey.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-bus-users-survey.pdf

lozenge 8y ago
It depends on your route. Grandparent sounds like they are bussing in central London. Further out busses are often the fastest route as all the tube lines are headed into the city, but people often want to go in other directions. There are many people further out whose commute is bus then tube as well. Bus stops are 1km apart and the bus might stop for 30 seconds or skip stops entirely.
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
On page 17 of that same doc you can see that 67% of day bus riders (higher at night) have a total household income of under 30k GBP, which isn’t enough for a household in London without tax credits or other government support
- martinald 8y ago
  Not really, I imagine a lot of people are single people living in shared houses.

icebraining 8y ago

Alternatively, you can use the model in Belgium and Luxembourg, where you're still expected to tap, but there's readers all over the bus and you can enter through any door. Of course, that relies much more on trust and/or fear of inspectors.

ben_w 8y ago
Or make the fine matches the fare-dodging rate. Or CCTV and face recognition to auto-bill users or fine fare dodgers. That may or may not be good enough to replace user actions like tapping a card reader (Amazon stores are not the whole population, and I don’t know the reliability, thry may be an expensive public beta for all I know), but there are also privacy implications for such systems.
- the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
  Lots of cities just do spot checks and do better that way. Oslo and Vienna do spot checks for instance and have much higher throughput and need fewer station staff that way and do not want to sacrifice hat.
mcintyre1994 8y ago
The DLR in London is already a bit like this, at least some of the stops don't have any barrier and rely on honesty/inspectors to tap your card before you get on or have a valid ticket.

IkmoIkmo 8y ago

Well the tube makes about 50% of its money from fares which is about double the 25% it gets from the government. The rest are things like advertising, renting out real estate, financial plays etc. Consider that London has a ton of people from outside of the city, and tourists. You can go free for residents, but you'd still need an RFID card system for everyone else. Moreover, if just London decided to do this you'd still need an RFID system for transport that goes in/out of the city, e.g. every train station, many buses. In Estonia they still used cards even though it was all free. You essentially need to make the whole country have free public transport, that's a big decision. Hope the UK will get there within 15 years!

isostatic 8y ago
> You essentially need to make the whole country have free public transport That would be horrendous. Trains are already crowded enough off-peak. In lieu of more infrastructure (like HS2) the real solution would be to increase the prices to encourage people who are more concerned about price than speed, flexibility, frequency, to take less crowded trains, or other solutions like coaches.
- 7952 8y ago
  Or just allow a certain number of free miles per day. Ramp up pricing on longer unsustainable commutes. This would mean that the maximum number of people can use the system and prevent abuse.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Pricing actually drops on long unsustainable commutes. I travel Crewe to London every few weeks, if I want to arrive in London before 11.30, or avoid the 1900-2000 overcrowded 'offpeak' trains, without using the slow train or the loopholes, that's £261 return, or about 90p/mile. If I were to commute every day (and it's only 90 minutes), that would cost £361.90 a week, or 25p per mile (for a monthly ticket it comes down to £1,133.20 for the month -- or under 20p per mile.
- crispyporkbites 8y ago

isostatic 8y ago

The bottleneck on a busy stop (where say 40 people board) are people getting on, shuffling down the bus, going up the stairs, etc. I believe you're allowed to board in the middle doors too.

notahacker 8y ago
yeah, the tapping really isn't the bottleneck that count the correct change was, and many people boarding buses for short distances are using them precisely because they're not that mobile.
- ghaff 8y ago
  The problem in many cities is often with people who don't use the system all that much. Routine commuters? They probably have a monthly pass of some sort. Even semi-regular users of a service in a city probably have some sort of pay-as-you-go contactless card like Oyster, Clipper, or Charlie. Tourists or rare users? They're liming up at a handful of machines. Can't figure out the options. May be having trouble with language. May be having trouble with payment. Can't choose among the many options. I've been in this latter situation many times. I have my cards and apps for the places I routinely go. For the vast bulk of other places, I'm usually reminded of how difficult these systems can be to navigate--even if I've taken the time to do some homework in advance.
crispyporkbites 8y ago
You can board in the middle (eg if with a pram or wheelchair), but then the bus driver will ask you to come to the front of the bus and tap in, while the entire bus has to wait for that.
- isostatic 8y ago
  I assume that doesn't apply to the "new routemasters"?

jimmytidey 8y ago

There is a similar debate around paying the £7.00 for NHS prescriptions. The vast majority of prescriptions go to elderly, young, pregnant or chronically ill people who don't pay.

jdietrich 8y ago
It's £8.80 now. About 10% of prescriptions are paid for, which contributes about 0.5% of the total NHS budget. Prescriptions are free across the board in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The bigger problem IMO is dental charges and the shortage of NHS dentists. The NHS fee for a Band 3 dental procedure (crowns, veneers, bridges etc) is £256.50, which is prohibitively expensive for people on low incomes. Many people can't access NHS dentists at all because of a shortage of providers in their area.
walshemj 8y ago
Is that so I still had to pay for my prescriptions (and I was on a lot of meds) with chronic kidney failure for around 2 decades (before I was on dialysis) even when I was on the waiting list. It made sense to buy the annual pre pay card for £104.

stevekemp 8y ago

> there are stops every 100-200m This is true, but it's actually fascinating that this is required for the elderly and immobile. If the stops are too far apart then people have to walk too far to get the bus, and so in practice they don't. I used to feel the same when I lived in Edinburgh, that the stops were too frequent, but despite the stopping/starting it was useful for others. Edinburgh has (had?) a fantastic local bus-service. Definitely the best I've experienced in the UK, cheap, reliable, and an unusually friendly set of drivers.

crispyporkbites 8y ago
You need the frequent stops for sure, although perhaps they could make 1 in every 4 buses and express, with limited stops. Either way, if there’s 4 double doors along the whole side of the bus that can be used to board / alight, without a tap in queue, the turnaround time per stop could be 3-4x faster.
lucb1e 8y ago
I've often argued half the stops should be marked as disabled/elderly stops. The stops are so frequent, I wouldn't mind walking one stop further at all (or in a few cases even two stops), and I'm really lazy when it comes to physical exercise. Some stops are so close you can recognise people standing at the previous or next one. I would at least like to see a trial, where half the stops (of those which are really close) are marked as meant for disabled/elderly/blind people. Everyone can stand at every stop and the bus will service it, but everyone likes faster transport and hopefully they'll choose to not stand at disabled stops. Some assholes will undoubtedly refuse, but if that happens at one or two stops out of ten or twenty, that's a win. Or, alternatively, only service each stop with every other bus. The lines where there are enough people to have stops every 1 minute walking distance, there are also enough buses (like every 10 minutes) to not have to wait long if you don't want to walk to the next stop. Or you time leaving work so that you're there when your closest stop gets serviced: that's no disadvantage for you and a win for speed.
- stevekemp 8y ago
  I suspect the average number of stops must be factored into the schedule - such that if the bus stopped at only 50% of the shelters on its route the timetables would need changing. (And of course sometimes a bus will stop when people want to get off, not necessarily because people want to embark.)

mayniac 8y ago

Tube barriers have the same problem, although it's not really environmental. Ever seen Canary Wharf station (jubilee line) at 6pm? Or almost any DLR station where there's only two or three oyster card readers for an entire station? I've heard of people being stuck outside the elevators of the jubilee branch for up to half an hour when the DLR is on strike. Getting rid of the barriers would get people in and out of stations faster, reduce queues and get rid of a lot of redundant station jobs which only exist to get people through the barriers. Actually those last two points may get significant backlash from the British public and the public transport unions respectively..

orf 8y ago
Getting rid of the barriers removes the ability to control overcrowding on the platform itself, which at peak times with DLR strikes causes a big headache. You can't just let tens of thousands of people stream into an enclosed space like that without controls.
lozenge 8y ago
At Canary Wharf and the ticket barriers and escalators are deliberately kept closed or are going in the "wrong" direction to prevent the platforms from being too full. This way there is room to get off the train even at 6pm when there are a thousand people waiting to get in the train.

baby 8y ago

Your description doesn't reflect mine. I take the bus all the time and see people from the whole spectrum everytime.

smoe 8y ago

Your last paragraph is how it works in Switzerland. There are no checks when entering busses, trams and trains. Busdrivers in cities will usually not let you pay with them but sent you to the ticket machine placed in the middle of the bus. They do send controllers "randomly" to check whether people have valid rides and hand out quite hefty fines if not. So far I have only ever heard the transportation companies complaining loudly about not being able to collect fines from some people, rather than fare dodging itself being considered a big problem.

fyfy18 8y ago

I get the bus everyday (working in Westminster) and there are plenty of other people in suits who do the same. Busses aren’t just for the poor. I get the bus as it provides the fastest route for getting to work (other than cycling). The tube would require me to change then walk, and an Uber would be longer due to traffic (as they can’t use bus lanes). The new Routemasters definitely optimise the loading/unloading speed, hopefully they will be rolled out to new routes. Also all new London busses over the last few years have been hybrid or electric, so idling isn’t that much of an issue now.

agumonkey 8y ago

I wonder how many buses are hybrids. Considering the low regular pace, frequent stops .. braking regeneration would help a lot.

Symbiote 8y ago
30% of London's fleet, increasing to 60% by the end of this year. (Plus a few zero emission.) Source: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/buses/improving-buses https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/buses/improving-buses
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I've read wikipedia since, it seems cities are ramping up. Paris is also making offers for a 1000 e-bus fleet around 2025. Also there are capabuses, China tested them, ultracapacitor based for 3km trips between recharge. Funny.