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Post by capitalomnibus on Oct 16, 2018 11:31:41 GMT
Or as you mention at times, it could end up with a driver hour breach of 5 hours 30 mins in heavy traffic etc. a turn may prevent this happening. At times when a bus is left to run and the driver reaches the hours, it would result in further disappointment for passengers as they would be ultimately kicked off the bus as the driver would not be allowed to go further. I can understand buses being curtailed if the driver is in danger of running out of driving time but it's being done far too often. Looking at the TfL twitter feed this, and buses waiting at stops to regulate the service, seem to be the top subject for complaint and can only result in a further decline in usage. In some cases it isn't done enough. Most buses would be sent into delays then we end up with huge gaps in the service. What you may not realise by just looking at the route on LVF etc is the gaps being created at time if everything was left to run end to end. You end up with bunching, poor QSI results and fines. Then a peeed off public seeing 2-3 buses turn up at once. |
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Post by SILENCED on Oct 16, 2018 12:22:34 GMT
I can understand buses being curtailed if the driver is in danger of running out of driving time but it's being done far too often. Looking at the TfL twitter feed this, and buses waiting at stops to regulate the service, seem to be the top subject for complaint and can only result in a further decline in usage. In some cases it isn't done enough. Most buses would be sent into delays then we end up with huge gaps in the service. What you may not realise by just looking at the route on LVF etc is the gaps being created at time if everything was left to run end to end. You end up with bunching, poor QSI results and fines. Then a peeed off public seeing 2-3 buses turn up at once. But the current system is driving people away from buses ... do you think a system that actively encourages and finacially benefits companies to pad out services to run excessively slowly is the right way to go ... customer numbers suggest not! I dont mind waiting for a bus ... it is accepted ... but being deliberated delayed is unacceptable in my eyes. The few weeks ago, I was on a bus and needed to make a connection. My bus was due 2 minutes before my connecting bus. 3 stops away we were regulated and arrived to see my connecting bus pull away as I arrived ... had to wait 20 mins for next one ... so delayed by 23 minutes. Since then I have driven when making that journey, as I do not appreciate my time being wasted, and driving takes less time than that time that was needlessly wasted. As passengers, why should we care about commercial bonuses or fines? We just want to feel our journey does matter. The current system just peees them off! In retail the most important customer is the one you are dealing with ... a lesson London Bus operators and TfL could learn from. |
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Post by foxhat on Oct 16, 2018 12:48:28 GMT
You're clearly a bit "fed up" [1] with the service. Have you complained to TfL or, if you're on Twitter, tweeted Go Ahead London to point out the failings and the impact of you / others [2]? [1] this may be an understatement. [2] early morning buses tend to have a regular clientel IME. I tried your option 2. Standard answer - please contact TfL. I think they only want positive comments on their Twitter feed. Same with Arriva. At least you got a response.
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Post by foxhat on Oct 16, 2018 12:52:54 GMT
Quite honestly I don't think Go Ahead will give two hoots as long as TfL let them get away with it. I agree that it's totally unacceptable, there's no point in publishing a timetable if drivers are allowed to leave early. TfL class up to 2:30 minutes early as "on time" so it's TfL policy you need to be arguing with cl54 , not the drivers' actions! They are simply following what they're told, which is no more than two minutes early. The new schedule hasn't helped the matter either, simply given the route too much running time. Ontime is no more than 2 early or 5 late on high frequency routes. Low frequency is 0 early, and up to 5 late.
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Post by foxhat on Oct 16, 2018 13:18:29 GMT
In some cases it isn't done enough. Most buses would be sent into delays then we end up with huge gaps in the service. What you may not realise by just looking at the route on LVF etc is the gaps being created at time if everything was left to run end to end. You end up with bunching, poor QSI results and fines. Then a peeed off public seeing 2-3 buses turn up at once. But the current system is driving people away from buses ... do you think a system that actively encourages and finacially benefits companies to pad out services to run excessively slowly is the right way to go ... customer numbers suggest not! I dont mind waiting for a bus ... it is accepted ... but being deliberated delayed is unacceptable in my eyes. The few weeks ago, I was on a bus and needed to make a connection. My bus was due 2 minutes before my connecting bus. 3 stops away we were regulated and arrived to see my connecting bus pull away as I arrived ... had to wait 20 mins for next one ... so delayed by 23 minutes. Since then I have driven when making that journey, as I do not appreciate my time being wasted, and driving takes less time than that time that was needlessly wasted. As passengers, why should we care about commercial bonuses or fines? We just want to feel our journey does matter. The current system just peees them off! In retail the most important customer is the one you are dealing with ... a lesson London Bus operators and TfL could learn from. There is a need to provide a "headway" service to enable even 'departures' from bus stops. If regulation didn't occur at all then there would be bunching all over the place followed by horrendous service gaps. However, having regulation so close to a terminus does seem a little pointless. Except perhaps where there are very tight bus stand constraints, like the 271 at Highgate for example.
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Post by DE20106 on Oct 16, 2018 13:19:23 GMT
In some cases it isn't done enough. Most buses would be sent into delays then we end up with huge gaps in the service. What you may not realise by just looking at the route on LVF etc is the gaps being created at time if everything was left to run end to end. You end up with bunching, poor QSI results and fines. Then a peeed off public seeing 2-3 buses turn up at once. But the current system is driving people away from buses ... do you think a system that actively encourages and finacially benefits companies to pad out services to run excessively slowly is the right way to go ... customer numbers suggest not! I dont mind waiting for a bus ... it is accepted ... but being deliberated delayed is unacceptable in my eyes. The few weeks ago, I was on a bus and needed to make a connection. My bus was due 2 minutes before my connecting bus. 3 stops away we were regulated and arrived to see my connecting bus pull away as I arrived ... had to wait 20 mins for next one ... so delayed by 23 minutes. Since then I have driven when making that journey, as I do not appreciate my time being wasted, and driving takes less time than that time that was needlessly wasted. As passengers, why should we care about commercial bonuses or fines? We just want to feel our journey does matter. The current system just peees them off! In retail the most important customer is the one you are dealing with ... a lesson London Bus operators and TfL could learn from. Surely a way to combat this would be for TfL to cut PVRs, but not frequencies. Therefore buses need to make the journey quicker to retain the frequencies. I’m aware of the heel dragging on the 5, with 30 vehicles. How many vehicles do you think it would actually need to run buses at a decent speed? 24 maybe? On that subject, the PVR of the 474 has baffled me. Two routes it runs exactly the same frequencies with are the 122 and 145, both of which are way more than TWICE the length of the 474. The former two require 17/18 vehicles for those 12 mile routes, but the 474 needs 14 (ie only slightly less) to run at the same frequencies but for a route less than half as long. However much running time does it have?!? |
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Post by foxhat on Oct 16, 2018 13:33:53 GMT
But the current system is driving people away from buses ... do you think a system that actively encourages and finacially benefits companies to pad out services to run excessively slowly is the right way to go ... customer numbers suggest not! I dont mind waiting for a bus ... it is accepted ... but being deliberated delayed is unacceptable in my eyes. The few weeks ago, I was on a bus and needed to make a connection. My bus was due 2 minutes before my connecting bus. 3 stops away we were regulated and arrived to see my connecting bus pull away as I arrived ... had to wait 20 mins for next one ... so delayed by 23 minutes. Since then I have driven when making that journey, as I do not appreciate my time being wasted, and driving takes less time than that time that was needlessly wasted. As passengers, why should we care about commercial bonuses or fines? We just want to feel our journey does matter. The current system just peees them off! In retail the most important customer is the one you are dealing with ... a lesson London Bus operators and TfL could learn from. Surely a way to combat this would be for TfL to cut PVRs, but not frequencies. Therefore buses need to make the journey quicker to retain the frequencies. I’m aware of the heel dragging on the 5, with 30 vehicles. How many vehicles do you think it would actually need to run buses at a decent speed? 24 maybe? On that subject, the PVR of the 474 has baffled me. Two routes it runs exactly the same frequencies with are the 122 and 145, both of which are way more than TWICE the length of the 474. The former two require 17/18 vehicles for those 12 mile routes, but the 474 needs 14 (ie only slightly less) to run at the same frequencies but for a route less than half as long. However much running time does it have?!? Having done the 474 recently in the dying weeks of the old Woolwich ferries, there was a lot of crawling and "waiting time" on empty roads around London City Airport. It was a weekend however. |
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Post by snoggle on Oct 16, 2018 13:43:13 GMT
Seems there has been some sort of launch today for the new safety spec on London buses that applies from next year. Tom Edwards has been at Milbrook seeing an electric bus "with added noise" so pedestrians can hear them going. That was a Wright Streetair single decker. Also a ADL MMC double deck with automatic braking system being driven at an object and it stops before colliding with it. Going to be interesting to see automatic braking works in London traffic conditions. I assume the bus will just stop and then never move again. The new buses on route 20 are going to be fun! Meanwhile "safety campaigner" Tom Kearney is still not satisfied. What a ******* surprise! This is all a load of needless complexity and spend. I assume buses will not be allowed out in service if any aspect of the new technology is not working so that's more performance risk for the operators to manage and more cost loaded into vehicle costs, maintenance costs and contract risk. The end result of all that will be less service operated because TfL will have to contain the cost increases by reducing service levels. That doesn't look like a win to me. |
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Post by DE20106 on Oct 16, 2018 13:44:22 GMT
Surely a way to combat this would be for TfL to cut PVRs, but not frequencies. Therefore buses need to make the journey quicker to retain the frequencies. I’m aware of the heel dragging on the 5, with 30 vehicles. How many vehicles do you think it would actually need to run buses at a decent speed? 24 maybe? On that subject, the PVR of the 474 has baffled me. Two routes it runs exactly the same frequencies with are the 122 and 145, both of which are way more than TWICE the length of the 474. The former two require 17/18 vehicles for those 12 mile routes, but the 474 needs 14 (ie only slightly less) to run at the same frequencies but for a route less than half as long. However much running time does it have?!? Having done the 474 recently in the dying weeks of the old Woolwich ferries, there was a lot of crawling and "waiting time" on empty roads around London City Airport. It was a weekend however. hang on, the free Woolwich ferry isn’t running anymore?!? 😯 |
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Post by Eastlondoner62 on Oct 16, 2018 13:45:55 GMT
Having done the 474 recently in the dying weeks of the old Woolwich ferries, there was a lot of crawling and "waiting time" on empty roads around London City Airport. It was a weekend however. hang on, the free Woolwich ferry isn’t running anymore?!? 😯 It's temporarily closed until the end of the year while engineering works are carried out. |
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Post by vjaska on Oct 16, 2018 13:46:30 GMT
Surely a way to combat this would be for TfL to cut PVRs, but not frequencies. Therefore buses need to make the journey quicker to retain the frequencies. I’m aware of the heel dragging on the 5, with 30 vehicles. How many vehicles do you think it would actually need to run buses at a decent speed? 24 maybe? On that subject, the PVR of the 474 has baffled me. Two routes it runs exactly the same frequencies with are the 122 and 145, both of which are way more than TWICE the length of the 474. The former two require 17/18 vehicles for those 12 mile routes, but the 474 needs 14 (ie only slightly less) to run at the same frequencies but for a route less than half as long. However much running time does it have?!? Having done the 474 recently in the dying weeks of the old Woolwich ferries, there was a lot of crawling and "waiting time" on empty roads around London City Airport. It was a weekend however. I did it two Fridays ago between the Ferry & Gallions Reach DLR and the driver towards Gallions Reach was flooring it whilst the return journey was a little more sedate but not slow either. I did have a slow journey on a Saturday on the first day of Stagecoach operation on the 474. |
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Post by 15002 on Oct 16, 2018 13:48:47 GMT
Having done the 474 recently in the dying weeks of the old Woolwich ferries, there was a lot of crawling and "waiting time" on empty roads around London City Airport. It was a weekend however. hang on, the free Woolwich ferry isn’t running anymore?!? 😯 They’re going to replace the old boats with new boats and will open again late December 2018. tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/woolwich-ferry-upgrade |
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Post by vjaska on Oct 16, 2018 13:49:01 GMT
hang on, the free Woolwich ferry isn’t running anymore?!? 😯 It's temporarily closed until the end of the year while engineering works are carried out. Indeed, that's why I deliberately chose the Smyths at Gallions Reach rather than the one at Charlton so I could get a final ride on the old ferries lol. |
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Post by snoggle on Oct 16, 2018 14:26:23 GMT
On that subject, the PVR of the 474 has baffled me. Two routes it runs exactly the same frequencies with are the 122 and 145, both of which are way more than TWICE the length of the 474. The former two require 17/18 vehicles for those 12 mile routes, but the 474 needs 14 (ie only slightly less) to run at the same frequencies but for a route less than half as long. However much running time does it have?!? There is a fundamental problem at the heart of the contracting regime. TfL insist on relatively high levels of performance and also insist that operators take financial "pain" (a payment deduction) if they perform worse than target. If they perform better than target then they can earn a bonus. Logically this all seems very sensible. However when you get adverse circumstances like repeated road works, repeated accidents, changes in traffic conditions these are not necessarily in the direct control of the operator. In a performance regime structure the contractors will price into their bids an element of risk (financial padding) to cover the likely losses from these external factors that TfL holds them responsible for. To counter this risk pricing TfL try to use the retendering process (i.e competition between companies) to get the prices down and performance risk minimised. However where we have got to now is that there have been so many external changes (highway changes, cycle lanes, more congestion, 20 mph zones etc) that the operators have turned round and said "enough is enough, circumstances have changed permanently so routes MUST have more scheduled time in them". The Boris era gyratory and cycle superhighway works are the point where everything went wrong - Mr Trayner from Go Ahead said as much in that recent interview. This is why you are now getting risk averse schedules that are padded out time wise so that operators can cope with the worst foreseeable traffic conditions. It all, however, unravels when those worst foreseeable conditions don't happen which is most of the time. Therefore you have buses crawling along at 10 mph and waiting at stops and passengers getting really cheesed off. TfL have simply traded a priced performance risk for a risk averse schedule. The problem with risk averse schedules is that they are expensive because the slower a route is the more the round trip time increases meaning more vehicles for a given service level. As I have seen directly in Waltham Forest (Land of the cycle lane) this results in frequencies being chopped and improvements being cancelled because TfL cannot justify high PVRs for relatively low trafficed routes - the W11 and W12 being prime examples. The only way back from this nonsense is a lot more bus priority and TfL and the operators agreeing jointly to unravel these painfully slow risk averse schedules and agree another perfomance regime treatment for the genuninely rare but high impact incidents that wreck a route's performance for a day / week / whatever. It's not impossible to do but it needs careful consideration to avoid people "playing games" to gain financial advantage. |
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Post by sid on Oct 16, 2018 14:41:47 GMT
In some cases it isn't done enough. Most buses would be sent into delays then we end up with huge gaps in the service. What you may not realise by just looking at the route on LVF etc is the gaps being created at time if everything was left to run end to end. You end up with bunching, poor QSI results and fines. Then a peeed off public seeing 2-3 buses turn up at once. But the current system is driving people away from buses ... do you think a system that actively encourages and finacially benefits companies to pad out services to run excessively slowly is the right way to go ... customer numbers suggest not! I dont mind waiting for a bus ... it is accepted ... but being deliberated delayed is unacceptable in my eyes. The few weeks ago, I was on a bus and needed to make a connection. My bus was due 2 minutes before my connecting bus. 3 stops away we were regulated and arrived to see my connecting bus pull away as I arrived ... had to wait 20 mins for next one ... so delayed by 23 minutes. Since then I have driven when making that journey, as I do not appreciate my time being wasted, and driving takes less time than that time that was needlessly wasted. As passengers, why should we care about commercial bonuses or fines? We just want to feel our journey does matter. The current system just peees them off! In retail the most important customer is the one you are dealing with ... a lesson London Bus operators and TfL could learn from. Exactly, TfL seem to have become so transfixed with hitting the right targets and ticking the right boxes that the whole purpose of running buses in the first place seems to have been completely overlooked. I use Brighton & Hove buses quite regularly and they don't get delayed in order to regulate the service and they don't change destination mid route, late running is sorted out when the bus reaches its destination usually by sending it out of service to a point further along the route where they will be back on time. |
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