6 ms·

Analysis of distances between London's bus stops

46 points by transportguy 4y ago

GloucesterBoy 4y ago
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-stand-at-bus-stop-because-tfl-thought-the-seat-caused-yobbery-6517257.html https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/elderly-forced-to-stand-...
- azalemeth 4y ago
  It's not just elderly people who need to sit down – I fractured my T11 vertebral body (amongst lots of other back-related woes) and find standing up for a prolonged period of time moderately excruciating.
  - GloucesterBoy 4y ago
    That's true - and then there's pregnant women... and sometimes having a seat can make managing young children that little bit easier! A lot of the new hostile architecture does a great job at making ordinary people suffer.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      As this always comes up, disability is not an on/off, it's a spectrum. And we all will disabled in one way or another sooner or later. Even if you're young and healthy, but you pulled a muscle helping a friend move their couch, you will likely want to sit down on a bus.
- transportguy 4y ago
  London has Dial-a-ride for people with impairments which provides a door-to-door journey https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/dial-a-ride/ https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/dial-a-ride/ But of course, a lot of people don't qualify, and others don't want to use a different service to others.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    It's also a problem of people not wanting to be "in the way". Even if services are available on-demand, some older folks get the opinion that they don't want to explicitly request help as they'll add additional work for others, which they don't want to do. If the service is available anyways, they don't feel bad using it.
    - GloucesterBoy 4y ago
      I've met some elderly people who weren't happy they received free senior passes for travel and wanted to pay like everyone else
      - Tade0 4y ago
        My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s, and they're both generally upset whenever it turns out they can't do something which was not a problem in their 80s - by that I mean e.g. cooking for ten people and organizing a family get-together.
      - switch007 4y ago
        What happened when they contacted the council to offer to pay? Or returned their travel pass?
  - switch007 4y ago
    TIL, thank you! Might be very useful for some of my family There’s Taxicard too https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/taxicard/apply-taxicard-your-borough https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/taxicard/apply-ta...
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  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?
  - incone123 4y ago
    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.
    - richiebful1 4y ago
      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,163.7h,79.4t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1sSc8NE6Q_qIkB5C2cvWs_EQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i39?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5007804,-0.119582,3a,84.9y,1...
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      It still has a bus stop though, the cycle path goes around it... https://goo.gl/maps/t3kXprqhmxVqWKrd8 https://goo.gl/maps/t3kXprqhmxVqWKrd8
- easytiger 4y ago
  Those island bus stops must count as some of the worst design I've ever seen. Stupid beyond words
ronnykylin 4y ago
Great reference materials for urban planning.
sum1ren 4y ago
Slightly tangential, but here's a viz of how sprawled out London's bus network is https://youtu.be/xAnCD_Czwxw?t=648 https://youtu.be/xAnCD_Czwxw?t=648. Quite amazing how well the bus system works.
- TheHumanist 4y ago
  Even more tangential, but setting up a truly proper bus system in Cities XL is usually the task the runs me into a brick wall and leads me to stepping away from the game for a bit.
  - sum1ren 4y ago
    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?
    - TheHumanist 4y ago
      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 such a massive, established road network at that point and I have no idea where to begin. The funds are not an issue at that point (usually) because the city is large enough that money is kind of rolling in. It is more just the size of the city. It will need A LOT of bus stops, which makes sense... so I guess it is more just the overwhelming nature of the task. Would it perhaps make more sense and be much less overwhelming if I were to be placing at least some bus stops as I progress through the earlier half of the game? Of course it would. Now, there are times where it wouldn't be as economically feasible, of course. Money flows much more freely in the later game, I have noticed. But, it would definitely ease the burden later in the game as far as having such a large city to cover. Then there is the question of 'is this bus stop too close/too far from the last one?' I think it is really just the scale at which I have to place them and lack of preparation on my part (which is my life in general with pretty terrible ADHD). Highly suggest giving that game a try, though. It's pretty incredible.
eptcyka 4y ago
When buses stop every 200 meters, as an able-bodied person, this tips the scales just enough for me to not consider the price of the ticket to be economically viable.
- smcl 4y ago
  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 the distance - after doing a bit of measuring on Google Maps 200m is actually a really reasonable cutoff point, in my city at least.
  - eptcyka 4y ago
    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.
    - elAhmo 4y ago
      This is a perfectly valid comment. And a situation I experience many times. For example, reaching from Liverpool street to Farringdon could take 30 minutes during peak times. I still have the image of nearly a dozen busses queueing up and trying to take people from the station. I decided to talk very often instead of not taking the bus and it wasn't slower.
      - jstx1 4y ago
        That specific journey is much faster now that the Elizabeth Line is running.
yijido88 4y ago
It would be also great to see this with a map overlay. I'm not familiar with London transport network.
evrimoztamur 4y ago
"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, picking up and dropping passengers at practically any point along the route. The system works because of the sheer volume of these buses and the simple, straight road. It almost resembles a river and the settlement around it.
- cidd 4y ago
  Pretty common in the Philippines too
- GloucesterBoy 4y ago
  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.
- illiarian 4y ago
  > 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
- a_c 4y ago
  This is also how the Hong Kong privately owned minibus [1] is run. Not only is it hail and ride, you are also expected to shout your destination to the driver shortly before arriving. It is not for the faint of heart, both tourists and socially awkward locals. Highly recommend a try. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus#Red_minibuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus#Red_minibuses
ml_basics 4y ago
> 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.
867-5309 4y ago
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
llimos 4y ago
> 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. Including the H2, which came top of the list for "shortest average distances between stops for routes without complex branches". How is this accounted for in the data?

46 points by transportguy 4y ago

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-stand-at-bus-stop-because-tfl-thought-the-seat-caused-yobbery-6517257.html https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/elderly-forced-to-stand-...

azalemeth 4y ago
It's not just elderly people who need to sit down – I fractured my T11 vertebral body (amongst lots of other back-related woes) and find standing up for a prolonged period of time moderately excruciating.
- GloucesterBoy 4y ago
  That's true - and then there's pregnant women... and sometimes having a seat can make managing young children that little bit easier! A lot of the new hostile architecture does a great job at making ordinary people suffer.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    As this always comes up, disability is not an on/off, it's a spectrum. And we all will disabled in one way or another sooner or later. Even if you're young and healthy, but you pulled a muscle helping a friend move their couch, you will likely want to sit down on a bus.
transportguy 4y ago
London has Dial-a-ride for people with impairments which provides a door-to-door journey https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/dial-a-ride/ https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/dial-a-ride/ But of course, a lot of people don't qualify, and others don't want to use a different service to others.
- capableweb 4y ago
  It's also a problem of people not wanting to be "in the way". Even if services are available on-demand, some older folks get the opinion that they don't want to explicitly request help as they'll add additional work for others, which they don't want to do. If the service is available anyways, they don't feel bad using it.
  - GloucesterBoy 4y ago
    I've met some elderly people who weren't happy they received free senior passes for travel and wanted to pay like everyone else
    - Tade0 4y ago
      My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s, and they're both generally upset whenever it turns out they can't do something which was not a problem in their 80s - by that I mean e.g. cooking for ten people and organizing a family get-together.
    - switch007 4y ago
      What happened when they contacted the council to offer to pay? Or returned their travel pass?
- switch007 4y ago
  TIL, thank you! Might be very useful for some of my family There’s Taxicard too https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/taxicard/apply-taxicard-your-borough https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/taxicard/apply-ta...
LatteLazy 4y ago
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?
- incone123 4y ago
  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.
  - richiebful1 4y ago
    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,163.7h,79.4t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1sSc8NE6Q_qIkB5C2cvWs_EQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i39?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5007804,-0.119582,3a,84.9y,1...
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    It still has a bus stop though, the cycle path goes around it... https://goo.gl/maps/t3kXprqhmxVqWKrd8 https://goo.gl/maps/t3kXprqhmxVqWKrd8
easytiger 4y ago
Those island bus stops must count as some of the worst design I've ever seen. Stupid beyond words

ronnykylin 4y ago

Great reference materials for urban planning.

sum1ren 4y ago

Slightly tangential, but here's a viz of how sprawled out London's bus network is https://youtu.be/xAnCD_Czwxw?t=648 https://youtu.be/xAnCD_Czwxw?t=648. Quite amazing how well the bus system works.

TheHumanist 4y ago
Even more tangential, but setting up a truly proper bus system in Cities XL is usually the task the runs me into a brick wall and leads me to stepping away from the game for a bit.
- sum1ren 4y ago
  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?
  - TheHumanist 4y ago
    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 such a massive, established road network at that point and I have no idea where to begin. The funds are not an issue at that point (usually) because the city is large enough that money is kind of rolling in. It is more just the size of the city. It will need A LOT of bus stops, which makes sense... so I guess it is more just the overwhelming nature of the task. Would it perhaps make more sense and be much less overwhelming if I were to be placing at least some bus stops as I progress through the earlier half of the game? Of course it would. Now, there are times where it wouldn't be as economically feasible, of course. Money flows much more freely in the later game, I have noticed. But, it would definitely ease the burden later in the game as far as having such a large city to cover. Then there is the question of 'is this bus stop too close/too far from the last one?' I think it is really just the scale at which I have to place them and lack of preparation on my part (which is my life in general with pretty terrible ADHD). Highly suggest giving that game a try, though. It's pretty incredible.

eptcyka 4y ago

When buses stop every 200 meters, as an able-bodied person, this tips the scales just enough for me to not consider the price of the ticket to be economically viable.

smcl 4y ago
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 the distance - after doing a bit of measuring on Google Maps 200m is actually a really reasonable cutoff point, in my city at least.
- eptcyka 4y ago
  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.
  - elAhmo 4y ago
    This is a perfectly valid comment. And a situation I experience many times. For example, reaching from Liverpool street to Farringdon could take 30 minutes during peak times. I still have the image of nearly a dozen busses queueing up and trying to take people from the station. I decided to talk very often instead of not taking the bus and it wasn't slower.
    - jstx1 4y ago
      That specific journey is much faster now that the Elizabeth Line is running.

yijido88 4y ago

It would be also great to see this with a map overlay. I'm not familiar with London transport network.

evrimoztamur 4y ago

"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, picking up and dropping passengers at practically any point along the route. The system works because of the sheer volume of these buses and the simple, straight road. It almost resembles a river and the settlement around it.

cidd 4y ago
Pretty common in the Philippines too
GloucesterBoy 4y ago
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.
illiarian 4y ago
> 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
a_c 4y ago
This is also how the Hong Kong privately owned minibus [1] is run. Not only is it hail and ride, you are also expected to shout your destination to the driver shortly before arriving. It is not for the faint of heart, both tourists and socially awkward locals. Highly recommend a try. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus#Red_minibuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus#Red_minibuses

ml_basics 4y ago

> 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.

867-5309 4y ago

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

llimos 4y ago

> 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. Including the H2, which came top of the list for "shortest average distances between stops for routes without complex branches". How is this accounted for in the data?