Routes you feel are underbussed & can be improved

[Deleted]

Apr 17, 2013 15:57:39 GMT @rgd976 said:

Wasn't there a 177X as well from Thamesmead ?

There was the X15 from Beckton which also ran on Saturdays.

There was the short lived Airbus spin off 609 from Mortlake to Bank.

Express routes are used in many other cities. I think TfL lack huge amounts of imagination.

End to end standardised routes have their place, but commuters and local residents needs are different to that of tourists .

Money could be saved by re-introducing short workings where the extremity of certain routes don't require the same level of frequency as the middle of the route.

Does the 235 need a bus every 8 mins SunburyVillage to Lower Feltham for example ?

I agree about the re-introduction of scheduled short workings, there are several routes which have a much busier middle than at the extremities. Such short workings could also be a good way to deal with corridors which have a huge amount of buses disproportionate to the number of users, whilst maintaining the ability for through journeys.

The short worked section could even run more frequently than currently, and then through journeys could be less frequent, e.g. making the 235 every 6 minutes along the busiest section, and then every 12 minutes for through journeys (which would solve the overcrowding problems one end of a route might have while meaning that 20 empty buses don't have constantly pass through the lighter-used end of a route). It could be especially helpful on longer routes. Routes like the 407 are a good example, where one route is essentially serving the purpose of two - Croydon to Caterham and Croydon to Sutton. The X26 could also benefit from extra shorts running Croydon - Kingston (the Kingston - Heathrow section would be alright with the 285 if they'd have double-decked it!!!)

[Deleted]

Apr 17, 2013 11:08:23 GMT M1104 said:

Was the X53 operation ceased for the opposite reason, lack of success? I seem to remember this route back in the late 80s or early 90's but do not know why it is no longer so.

The X53 was withdrawn when the JLE opened as it was presumably felt commuters would use that to North Greenwich and onward by bus from there.

[vjaska]

There was an X72 which ran over the current 472 between Thamesmead & Woolwich, was withdrawn around 1998-1999ish.

[Deleted]

The tube use short workings. Piccadilly line is a good example. So why not buses again ?

[snoggle]

Apr 17, 2013 21:54:39 GMT @rgd976 said:

The tube use short workings. Piccadilly line is a good example. So why not buses again ?

The reason why the tube has sectional services is much more to do with signalling and platform constraints than anything else. Outer bits of lines tend not to have sufficient terminal platform capacity nor signalling throughput to handle very high frequencies. The related element is the need to concentrate more service in Zone 1 which is where the highest peak demand is.

The bus network is not quite the same. There obviously can be stand / stop constraints but there is rarely limited space on the road itself. There may well be jams but there are not the same safety constraints as on a railway. I think we also need to get away from the impression that every route runs end to end - there are several which don't, often very high frequency routes like the 25 and 38.

The 235 might well appear to be "overbussed" on its outer section but if you were to halve the frequency what happens if the service is delayed and curtailed? - do the people of Sunbury end up with a bus every 30 mins? That's back to the days of really bad LT performance where outer reaches of routes had low frequencies and a "cut" meant huge gaps. That was hugely unattractive.

I know that in practice routes get curtailed and turned all day, every day as part of managing the service but having a service that is easy to understand is known to attract passengers. Plenty of evidence of that from deregulation land with the "core route" concept with simple routes, simple numbering and scrapping of route variants via side roads / villages etc. Given how little attention people pay to blind displays (night bus stories from drivers passim) it is probably sensible to have the objective of trying to run all jnys from end to end!