|
Post by theorangeone on Jul 25, 2018 19:09:26 GMT
I was checking the comments on Geoff Marshall's air conditioning tube map when I came across the suggestion to do the same for bus types (create a temperature version of the London bus map). This sounded like an excellent idea at first, but knowing just how many buses end up on the wrong routes and also how widely the air cooling quality varies even across buses of the same type, I realised this was not feasible.
What might be feasible, though, is to create a list of all buses operating in London, gather an army of enthusiasts to rate each one according to a clearly defined system, send this to the Cheyneys and ask to have it included as a column in the London Vehicle Finder.
The scale would run from 0 to 5:
0: none at all 1: it's not blowing out cold air 2: it's blowing cold air but you can only feel it a foot away 3: you can feel it sitting underneath it but nowhere else 4: a nice cool breeze is circulating 5: it's actually an icebox someone turn up the heating
Pioneering idea or doomed to failure? Who's in?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2018 20:30:57 GMT
I was checking the comments on Geoff Marshall's air conditioning tube map when I came across the suggestion to do the same for bus types (create a temperature version of the London bus map). This sounded like an excellent idea at first, but knowing just how many buses end up on the wrong routes and also how widely the air cooling quality varies even across buses of the same type, I realised this was not feasible. What might be feasible, though, is to create a list of all buses operating in London, gather an army of enthusiasts to rate each one according to a clearly defined system, send this to the Cheyneys and ask to have it included as a column in the London Vehicle Finder. The scale would run from 0 to 5: 0: none at all 1: it's not blowing out cold air 2: it's blowing cold air but you can only feel it a foot away 3: you can feel it sitting underneath it but nowhere else 4: a nice cool breeze is circulating 5: it's actually an icebox someone turn up the heating Pioneering idea or doomed to failure? Who's in? I’m in! I feel like this could really help over the summer as it is roasting - particularly in London. I was pretty annoyed that yesterday I was on a bus that had bad air con - so now we know if we want to go on a cool bus or a hot bus. Rush hour would also be a good reason to propose due to some buses being like human sardine cans.
|
|
|
Post by redbus on Jul 25, 2018 21:44:08 GMT
I was checking the comments on Geoff Marshall's air conditioning tube map when I came across the suggestion to do the same for bus types (create a temperature version of the London bus map). This sounded like an excellent idea at first, but knowing just how many buses end up on the wrong routes and also how widely the air cooling quality varies even across buses of the same type, I realised this was not feasible. What might be feasible, though, is to create a list of all buses operating in London, gather an army of enthusiasts to rate each one according to a clearly defined system, send this to the Cheyneys and ask to have it included as a column in the London Vehicle Finder. The scale would run from 0 to 5: 0: none at all 1: it's not blowing out cold air 2: it's blowing cold air but you can only feel it a foot away 3: you can feel it sitting underneath it but nowhere else 4: a nice cool breeze is circulating 5: it's actually an icebox someone turn up the heating Pioneering idea or doomed to failure? Who's in? I’m in! I feel like this could really help over the summer as it is roasting - particularly in London. I was pretty annoyed that yesterday I was on a bus that had bad air con - so now we know if we want to go on a cool bus or a hot bus. Rush hour would also be a good reason to propose due to some buses being like human sardine cans. I am in as well! For starters I travelled upstairs on one of the few MMCs on the 205 today, and I'll give it a 4 on the scale. Lovely breeze, noticeably higher temperature outside on leaving the bus.
|
|
|
Post by theorangeone on Jul 26, 2018 6:38:33 GMT
Well, if this is going to happen, we need a spreadsheet listing every single vehicle in London... over to you.
(And yes, every single vehicle - one LT can be very, very different in terms of its air cooling to another LT...)
|
|
|
Post by snoggle on Jul 26, 2018 10:12:22 GMT
Well, if this is going to happen, we need a spreadsheet listing every single vehicle in London... over to you. (And yes, every single vehicle - one LT can be very, very different in terms of its air cooling to another LT...) So, to be clear, you're saying people have to ride on every bus in London (over 8,000) and then use a fairly subjective rating scale and using humans who all have different perceptions as to what rates as "cool"? Hmmmmm. Excuse me for being a tad sceptical.
|
|
|
Post by redexpress on Jul 26, 2018 11:02:19 GMT
Well, if this is going to happen, we need a spreadsheet listing every single vehicle in London... over to you. (And yes, every single vehicle - one LT can be very, very different in terms of its air cooling to another LT...) There's already a database of London buses here, maintained by vjaska.
However I don't think it's a great idea to add a rating for each bus given that, as snoggle has pointed out, the rating will be hugely subjective unless the same person tests all 8000 buses. Also, the a/c performance of each individual bus does not stay the same all the time. You can catch a bus one day and it'll be freezing, catch the same bus a couple of days later and the a/c will have decided to switch itself off. I get the impression dodgy sensors are often to blame.
|
|
|
Post by theorangeone on Jul 26, 2018 21:01:46 GMT
OK, maybe not such a great idea if sensors change all the time. I just think it's a crying shame that we have the London Vehicle Finder and we're doing nothing with it - and that despite being able to know almost everything about a bus before it arrives, we're unable to know with certainty important things related to the comfort of the ride.
Subjectivity: I think I may need to define these more clearly, but while this all appears highly subjective, I'd say 0 (no air cooling at all) and 1 (air cooling vents that are malfunctioning and blowing ordinary air) are fairly objective. 2 (cool air can only be detected by putting a hand right next to the vent and 3 (cool air can only be detected by those sitting directly underneath a vent) are also fairly objective as they are dependent on distance from a vent mostly, and comparing against the benchmark of "outside".
4 and 5 are the only truly subjective ones - and I would redefine 5 as being able to immediately tell that there is air cooling seconds after stepping onto the bus, and 4 as being able to detect the air cooling from anywhere on the bus, just not immediately upon entering.
8000 buses: 40 enthusiasts means only 200 each. There's always going to be data blackspots but this is less a reasonably fast project, doable in 2 weeks, and more a slow burner that could last a good 5-10 years with continuous updates, like Google Streetview. 8000 is large, but getting a reasonable proportion shouldn't take too long. And the more data we get, the more contributors we might pick up... *strays into pipe dreams*
|
|
|
Post by capitalomnibus on Jul 26, 2018 21:16:56 GMT
Maybe it would be easier if you said, not blowing, blowing cold, blowing warm/standard air
|
|
|
Post by busaholic on Jul 26, 2018 21:38:25 GMT
It used to be said that Imran Khan was the coolest man around, so maybe if he has time to spare even though he's about to become President of Pakistan he should be invited to judge. After all, he was an in-law of the Man Who Would Be Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith.
|
|
|
Post by YY13VKP on Jul 26, 2018 22:21:42 GMT
OK, maybe not such a great idea if sensors change all the time. I just think it's a crying shame that we have the London Vehicle Finder and we're doing nothing with it - and that despite being able to know almost everything about a bus before it arrives, we're unable to know with certainty important things related to the comfort of the ride. Subjectivity: I think I may need to define these more clearly, but while this all appears highly subjective, I'd say 0 (no air cooling at all) and 1 (air cooling vents that are malfunctioning and blowing ordinary air) are fairly objective. 2 (cool air can only be detected by putting a hand right next to the vent and 3 (cool air can only be detected by those sitting directly underneath a vent) are also fairly objective as they are dependent on distance from a vent mostly, and comparing against the benchmark of "outside". 4 and 5 are the only truly subjective ones - and I would redefine 5 as being able to immediately tell that there is air cooling seconds after stepping onto the bus, and 4 as being able to detect the air cooling from anywhere on the bus, just not immediately upon entering. 8000 buses: 40 enthusiasts means only 200 each. There's always going to be data blackspots but this is less a reasonably fast project, doable in 2 weeks, and more a slow burner that could last a good 5-10 years with continuous updates, like Google Streetview. 8000 is large, but getting a reasonable proportion shouldn't take too long. And the more data we get, the more contributors we might pick up... *strays into pipe dreams* Let's be honest here, the majority of people who use LVF are bus enthusiasts. Not too many non-enthusiasts know about it. A lot of my friends for example use the "Bus Times" app on their phones, which uses the countdown feed and gives them the basic information about the bus, such as the reg of it, and don't have a clue LVF exists until I show them or they see me using it. Also, the main purpose of LVF is to find a particular bus or buses on a route, and it does just that. Sure, it could do with some additional information like adding running numbers that the bus is on etc, but I'm not too sure many people will take notice of how good or bad the air cooling on the buses are, I myself certainly don't.
|
|
|
Post by theorangeone on Jul 26, 2018 22:24:08 GMT
The hope is that we can eventually tie the LVF data into Citymapper or the like...
|
|
|
Post by 15002 on Jul 26, 2018 22:49:05 GMT
I think redexpress has a solid point. The AC isn’t gonna be the same all the time, someday the AC is gonna be blowing a lot of cold air and on another day it may be little, so this would be really hard to track down imo. The only way I’d see it working is more than one person using the same bus on different days to get an accurate estimate, but even then there still be inconsistencies with someone maybe experiencing no AC and the other person experiencing it. Nice effort but I don’t think it will go very far. There’s also the fact that YY13VKP pointed out, only enthusiasts really use LVF. It’s honestly gonna be pointless incorporating it into LVF due to people using regular apps, I’ve seen several of my mates use other apps to check the app and I think it’s more complicating using LVF over a regular bus checker for non bus enthusiasts so even if this was to come into fruition, I personally don’t think non enthusiasts will use it.
|
|
|
Post by ThinLizzy on Jul 26, 2018 23:02:08 GMT
I sat downstairs on an LT on the EL2 yesterday evening- I'd give that a -5. I even tweeted Tfl about the temperature, without reply
|
|
|
Post by vjaska on Jul 27, 2018 0:10:24 GMT
I sat downstairs on an LT on the EL2 yesterday evening- I'd give that a -5. I even tweeted Tfl about the temperature, without reply Pretty much every LT I get in my area gets a -5, haven't had one with a working air cooling system since last year. Honestly, it's absolutely unacceptable that something hasn't been done about it bar fitting some windows as you could argue it breaches health & safety when you have temperatures of 35 degrees on there.
|
|
|
Post by snoggle on Jul 27, 2018 10:15:36 GMT
OK, maybe not such a great idea if sensors change all the time. I just think it's a crying shame that we have the London Vehicle Finder and we're doing nothing with it - and that despite being able to know almost everything about a bus before it arrives, we're unable to know with certainty important things related to the comfort of the ride. "Not doing anything with it"? What like using it for its original intended purpose? I find it an immensely useful tool and I like it because it is "basic" and keeps to its core purpose. It's been nicely developed and tweaked to improve navigation and it's far nicer to use than most apps which are hopelessly over specified with far too many button presses to get any sort of reasonable info. I say leave LVF alone. If you want to create your own "how cool is your London Bus finder" then nowt to stop you - the data's free from TfL. OK it's been hot recently but soon enough it'll be autumn and then winter. What's the point of functionality that's normally only needed for a few days at a time in an average year? Also very few London buses are air conditioned anyway. Most are, at best, air cooled and passengers don't know how that works best - i.e. keep the windows closed! They don't know because TfL hasn't bothered to explain it to them so we have expensive tech on buses that never works properly because no one has ever told passengers what to do. And just to cap it all I suspect it would be pointless for TfL to explain because some people love to have a breeze, others don't care and others walk round slamming windows closed because even a tiny breeze makes them turn into icicles. Everyone has different tolerances - remember that clip on Route Masters - Running London where a gent moans at the Victoria bus stn controller about the "cold" on a route 38 DW? The shot was taken on a nice warm Spring day - most people in shot were wearing light clothes, no heavy coats - and this chap is moaning about the cold. I had exactly the same with staff on my old team. The second the temperature went below 20 degrees they were wearing jumpers and switching on portable heaters. The person next to them was then complaining about them creating too much heat. We also had an unbalanced air conditioning system on our floor - that only took over a year of constant nagging to get that fixed. My corner was very cold so lovely when it's boiling hot weather but dire in winter. My fingers used to go numb in winter as it was so cold. I had to walk round the office to warm up and run my hands under warm water to thaw them out. You'll excuse me if I am a tad jaded when it comes to measuring "warmth", "cold" and the effectiveness of cooling systems.
|
|