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Post by Volvo on Mar 12, 2013 8:48:07 GMT
let me clear this one up for you, during the day time CT isn't so packed that there wouldn't be enough stand space for the 253, trying going there in the day time and you will clearly see that. In the evening - night time when CT is more full, the 253s stand outside marks and spencer mare street or at the first bus stop at Hackney central station. Yes, I can see where you come from here. I raised this because for a very frequent route that comes every 3-4 minutes I was wondering if CT could be able to cope At CT during the day, you'll probably find 14 buses altogether in there most times of the day and thats including hackney central turned 38s, 253s on stand, spare or broken down buses for the 38/242/393 |
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Post by M1104 on Mar 12, 2013 9:53:36 GMT
There are actually quite a few useful duplicated overlapping routes. 53 & 453 68 & 468 63 & 363 IMO I think the 363 Is pointless but at the same time it has retained the link between Crystal Palace and Elephant & Castle. I personally think it should be extended to London Bridge. I disagree, the 63 can be very unreliable sometimes, and the 363 terminating at Elephant and Castle means it avoids the worst traffic. There's also meant to be serious stand space issues at London Bridge. Also the 343 goes to London Bridge, a route which parallels the 63/363 around the old North Peckham Estate. It also links with those routes twice...Peckham Rye Lane and the Elephant. I reckon any extension on the 363 should be from the opposite end, beyond Crystal Palace to Elmers End. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 11:32:32 GMT
The 13 is quite a handy link IMO. I agree. To be honest, there can't be that many truly pointless routes in London because let's face it TFL wouldn't be funding them. I wouldn't say that............although I agree the 13 is useful. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 12:49:58 GMT
EL2 does anyone actually travel past thames view ? Majority of times i been down or around there the routes empty and Dagenham Dock station is almost always empty , they should cancel the route until the Barking Riverside developments complete . I'd certainly agree there, I've never seen anybody use the Thames View to Dagenham Dock section. |
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Post by snowman on Mar 12, 2013 12:55:55 GMT
In my opinion 691 is useless, it is a school route from North Kingston to Hollyfield school, Surbiton and duplicates the 65 then 406/418. However the catchment area for Hollyfield doesn't include North Kingston (and hasn't for a few years), its latest catchment for 2013 entry is 1.7km (about a mile) so if furthest person lives a mile away why provide a school bus anyway.
Also in SW London there are a few routes that have useless sections and need shortening
156 is pointless between A3 roundabout and New Malden fountain (if it is to serve New Malden why not include High street or station)
490 should terminate at Twickenham station and lose the Richmond section (plenty of routes run Twickenham-Richmond)
111 Doesn't really need to go to Kingston (as it duplicates 216 and 411 for last mile or so)
285 is a duplication of 281 Fulwell-Kingston, it doesn't need both, actually I would kill 281 Fulwell-Tolworth and extend one of the routes that currently ends in Kingston.
The whole concept of having a number of buses ending in Kingston (at an assortment of scattered stands) during evenings and night needs rethinking, at the very least all night routes should go to same place (eg Cromwell Road bus station) so you can connect (whoever decided to end N87 about 150m away from night 285 etc needs their head seen to) , better still fewer terminating routes replaced by ones that go both sides of town. The night 65 was a start, but should replace 71 from about 9pm, not 2am. similarly 85 and 285 should be combined at night.
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Post by M1104 on Mar 12, 2013 14:04:29 GMT
Also in SW London there are a few routes that have useless sections and need shortening 156 is pointless between A3 roundabout and New Malden fountain (if it is to serve New Malden why not include High street or station). I take it you mean the 152.  The route used to go to Kingston and was shortened to New Malden Roundabout around twenty years ago. If it was extended a few stops along the High Street the route would suffer even more so from congestion along that extention. Also, i believe the bus stand is not all that big, particularly for an 10.8m Enviro200. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 14:27:41 GMT
Also in SW London there are a few routes that have useless sections and need shortening 156 is pointless between A3 roundabout and New Malden fountain (if it is to serve New Malden why not include High street or station). I take it you mean the 152. The route used to go to Kingston and was shortened to New Malden Roundabout around twenty years ago. If it was extended a few stops along the High Street the route would suffer even more so from congestion along that extention. Also, i believe the bus stand is not all that big, particularly for an 10.8m Enviro200. Small stand would probably restrict the use of the LWB Vs on the route, which would be a shame. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 15:10:04 GMT
Also in SW London there are a few routes that have useless sections and need shortening 156 is pointless between A3 roundabout and New Malden fountain (if it is to serve New Malden why not include High street or station). I take it you mean the 152. The route used to go to Kingston and was shortened to New Malden Roundabout around twenty years ago. If it was extended a few stops along the High Street the route would suffer even more so from congestion along that extention. Also, i believe the bus stand is not all that big, particularly for an 10.8m Enviro200. The current 152 stand isn't ideal and it would be more useful extended to the station, any congestion is just a byproduct of serving somewhere useful. |
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Post by vjaska on Mar 12, 2013 15:11:53 GMT
In my opinion 691 is useless, it is a school route from North Kingston to Hollyfield school, Surbiton and duplicates the 65 then 406/418. However the catchment area for Hollyfield doesn't include North Kingston (and hasn't for a few years), its latest catchment for 2013 entry is 1.7km (about a mile) so if furthest person lives a mile away why provide a school bus anyway. Also in SW London there are a few routes that have useless sections and need shortening 156 is pointless between A3 roundabout and New Malden fountain (if it is to serve New Malden why not include High street or station) 490 should terminate at Twickenham station and lose the Richmond section (plenty of routes run Twickenham-Richmond) 111 Doesn't really need to go to Kingston (as it duplicates 216 and 411 for last mile or so) 285 is a duplication of 281 Fulwell-Kingston, it doesn't need both, actually I would kill 281 Fulwell-Tolworth and extend one of the routes that currently ends in Kingston. The whole concept of having a number of buses ending in Kingston (at an assortment of scattered stands) during evenings and night needs rethinking, at the very least all night routes should go to same place (eg Cromwell Road bus station) so you can connect (whoever decided to end N87 about 150m away from night 285 etc needs their head seen to) , better still fewer terminating routes replaced by ones that go both sides of town. The night 65 was a start, but should replace 71 from about 9pm, not 2am. similarly 85 and 285 should be combined at night. I wonder if the use of Cromwell Road bus station by night routes was limited because of the need to reverse out of it, which has the potential to be a bit dangerous in the dark. That's just a thought though, not necessarily the case. It is worth noting that the 490 cut would leave Richmond with no direct links to Hatton Cross/Feltham/Heathrow Airport. Quite a lot of the routes along the Richmond - Twickenham corridor are also fairly busy so a change isn't necessarily practically (such as the 33 and R70) I can't comment on the 285 but the 281 was meant to be an incredibly busy route. With service use at that level would a cut be practical? From my own experience of the 285, I wouldn't cut that either as it was busy every time I've used it. It's a good alternative to the X26 if you don't want to wait & a lot quicker than the 111. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 15:13:24 GMT
The 312 is probably the most useless route of all in its current form.
In case anybody is unaware a 'temporary' weight restriction (its been in place nearly 3 years) in Spring Lane means the 312 is diverted and just duplicates the 197 between Norwood Junction and Croydon, just extend the 197 to South Croydon Garage and axe the 312.
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Post by snoggle on Mar 12, 2013 15:59:50 GMT
Also in SW London there are a few routes that have useless sections and need shortening 156 is pointless between A3 roundabout and New Malden fountain (if it is to serve New Malden why not include High street or station) 490 should terminate at Twickenham station and lose the Richmond section (plenty of routes run Twickenham-Richmond) 111 Doesn't really need to go to Kingston (as it duplicates 216 and 411 for last mile or so) 285 is a duplication of 281 Fulwell-Kingston, it doesn't need both, actually I would kill 281 Fulwell-Tolworth and extend one of the routes that currently ends in Kingston. The whole concept of having a number of buses ending in Kingston (at an assortment of scattered stands) during evenings and night needs rethinking, at the very least all night routes should go to same place (eg Cromwell Road bus station) so you can connect (whoever decided to end N87 about 150m away from night 285 etc needs their head seen to), better still fewer terminating routes replaced by ones that go both sides of town. The night 65 was a start, but should replace 71 from about 9pm, not 2am. similarly 85 and 285 should be combined at night. I am not very familiar with how busy Kingston area routes are these days but I cannot believe it makes any sense to curtail trunk routes a relatively short distance away from a huge traffic objective like Kingston town centre. Routes like the 111, 281 and 285 have served Kingston for a few decades. The 111 has the shortest time of serving Kingston. Curtailing them short would kill the routes which is not what is needed these days. I used to do Richmond - Twickenham by bus a lot years back and the buses were very busy then. Since then the 290 has been taken off but I cannot believe routes are any quieter now! If you took the 490 off you'd need to put the 290 back as demanded by several posters in another recent thread. By a complete fluke TfL used an example of routes 290 and 490 in their presentation about route planning and how they justified more buses on the 490 - see separate thread about "London Travelwatch presentations". You'll see that the 490 has several points with high loadings including at Twickenham and Richmond. If you look at the trip matrix you'll see that curtailing the 490 at Twickenham would affect nearly 3,000 trips while curtailing the 290 only affected 306 trips beyond Twickenham. The comment about night buses is interesting. I have not used them in Kingston but have looked at where they stop and it does seem odd that interchange is not easier. However Kingston's traffic system is far from ideal so convoluted routes are unavoidable despite there being bus lanes. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 18:16:16 GMT
Some of the posts in this thread seem to be ignoring the value of having an alternative route to get somewhere! One trunk route doesn't necessarily have to be the only way to get from one place to another, after all. Alternative routes are good for extra capacity, better frequencies, and supporting other routes with reliability issues... I agree. The current links we have maybe useful to some people hence why it is hard to call anything pointless! Like the 13 removing that route will effectively remove well used links between Golders Green - Aldwych. Extending the 139 to Golders Green is not going to make much difference because the passengers from the 13 will have actually lost their link and will have to interchange every time and also people do not like change. It is good to have alternative routes I agree because there are times when routes are fully packed to the brim. Now a pointless section that no one has mentioned is the 38 Between Hackney Central & Clapton Pond. The reason the 38 goes to Clapton Pond is to relieve the stand space at CT as the garage cannot house the vehicles in the peak of rush hour. People don't like change yes that is clear but we are going through a double-dip reccession and we need to cut pointless expenditure. The 82 can provide the lost link between Oxford Circus and Golder's Green with the loss of the 13, all be it with a frequency increase. The 139 can provide the link between Oxford Circus and Aldwych. People won't loose the Golders Green and Oxford Circus link at all as we still have the 82. It makes sense in my head anyway. |
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Post by ilovelondonbuses on Mar 12, 2013 18:54:30 GMT
In my opinion, 415 is the most useless route invented. Since when was there a demand to Tulse Hill? When I see it, the passengers are very scarce in number.
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Post by DT 11 on Mar 12, 2013 18:55:39 GMT
I agree. The current links we have maybe useful to some people hence why it is hard to call anything pointless! Like the 13 removing that route will effectively remove well used links between Golders Green - Aldwych. Extending the 139 to Golders Green is not going to make much difference because the passengers from the 13 will have actually lost their link and will have to interchange every time and also people do not like change. It is good to have alternative routes I agree because there are times when routes are fully packed to the brim. Now a pointless section that no one has mentioned is the 38 Between Hackney Central & Clapton Pond. The reason the 38 goes to Clapton Pond is to relieve the stand space at CT as the garage cannot house the vehicles in the peak of rush hour. People don't like change yes that is clear but we are going through a double-dip reccession and we need to cut pointless expenditure. The 82 can provide the lost link between Oxford Circus and Golder's Green with the loss of the 13, all be it with a frequency increase. The 139 can provide the link between Oxford Circus and Aldwych. People won't loose the Golders Green and Oxford Circus link at all as we still have the 82. It makes sense in my head anyway. To effectively remove a well used link is a silly idea. Once a well used link has been created it is not easy to just get rid of it. Increasing the frequency on the 82 will be a waste IMO, because the actual lost link to Aldwych will no longer exist, like many lost links in the past from major large trunk routes. There are plenty of other ways to save money, withdrawing well used services is a bad strategy. Plus you are also suggesting to make the 13s drivers redundant from their jobs and there are many people out there who are jobless looking for jobs, like I was saying its not easy to just withdraw a bus well used bus route. Withdrawing the 13 affects the drivers, the garage and of course the passengers. That is quite a lot of people in my view and no doubt they will get complaints about it. A way to effectively save money is to scrap the New Bus For London. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2013 19:00:52 GMT
The 312 is probably the most useless route of all in its current form. In case anybody is unaware a 'temporary' weight restriction (its been in place nearly 3 years) in Spring Lane means the 312 is diverted and just duplicates the 197 between Norwood Junction and Croydon, just extend the 197 to South Croydon Garage and axe the 312. Despite your irritation with the 312 it is useful if there's trouble on the 197 and the 466 during the peaks. And when Spring Lane bridge is eventually strengthened, it will be a useful link to Addiscombe too. I do feel the 312/412 merger would've made the route more useful - the 197 needn't even be extended to South Croydon - the link there was a problem with (East to South Croydon) could just be covered by extra capacity/frequency on the 466. We cannot have back up sevices just in case other routes have problems. Woodside Green had 5bph on the 197, it now has 15bph on the 130 197 and 312 which is just a ridiculous waste of resources. |
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The route used to go to Kingston and was shortened to New Malden Roundabout around twenty years ago. If it was extended a few stops along the High Street the route would suffer even more so from congestion along that extention. Also, i believe the bus stand is not all that big, particularly for an 10.8m Enviro200.
