Night Tube Bus Routes

[enviroPB]

Aug 6, 2017 14:31:25 GMT southlondonbus said:

I thought the night bus review had already happened and the outcome was services would stay as they.

But there are acutally some improvements that are being overlooked by not implementing the review. For example, the N207 was to drop to 6b bph up till Hayes and a 20 minute service up to Uxbridge. By TfL (or rather the Mayor) saying they're keeping things as they are, they are not making the Night Tube service as accessible for travellers west of Hayes and does nothing to entice people to use the Night Tube if they have to wait 30 minutes for a bus & then change to train.

I was skeptical about the frequency reductions at first, but riding night buses before the Night Tube was introduced and afterwards; it's plain daft not to trim the fat off some routes. To see a route like the N25 have 10 buses an hour at weekends and be at bursting point for most of its journey to only the bus being 1/3 at capacity last night, is the effect Night Tube was intended for on buses. Now it's time for TfL to be wise when they throw the axe down; not too cuthroat and not too dull if they [the Mayor] are intent on driving costs down by being efficient.

[redwave]

A few more reductions are provisionally expected to start in September/October.

[snoggle]

Aug 6, 2017 17:55:24 GMT redwave said:

A few more reductions are provisionally expected to start in September/October.

Any sign of any of the weekend night routes becoming nightly or is that a financial step too far at the moment?

[snoggle]

Aug 6, 2017 16:43:21 GMT enviroPB said:

if they [the Mayor] is intent on driving costs down by being efficient.

While I agree you don't really want legions of buses running round empty at night there is a very fine balance to be struck in how you change things. If, as TfL say, people are more fickle and "instant" about how they travel then hacking services to bits will drive people away. This is especially true where there are high frequency night corridors today.

I do worry about TfL's efficiency definition. So much of it is "reorganise, sack people, cut services" rather than "invest in new processes, train people to be multi skilled, stop doing stupid things, do the rest really well, do your procurement commercially". In the latter case then yes you may still cut some services but the scale should be far less because everything else is being done properly. I noticed recently that TfL were recruiting a brand new director for the Mayor's "sell TfL consultancy" flight of fancy. God knows what salary that person is going to be on and what empire they're going to build. And no I didn't apply despite, in the past, having been "sold" by LU to a foreign railway in a consultancy role.

[redwave]

I've not seen anything other than reductions for central area routes later this month and next. 

[enviroPB]

Aug 7, 2017 17:04:11 GMT redwave said:

I've not seen anything other than reductions for central area routes later this month and next. 

Well there is the small extension of the N15 from Trafalgar Square to Oxford Circus on the 26th of this month. Even then, its headway is also being shaved in one simultaneous move....it's starting to dawn on me how these savings have been covertly placed on the TfL agenda with little to no warning when the reductions are executed.

[Deleted]

The N9 was proposed to have an extra bus per hour Sun/Thur nights, with a reduction at weekends.
However if the Piccadilly Line is in a shambolic state at weekend nights, I can't see how TfL can rubber stamp a frequency reduction on this route, or the N97 (yet)

[snoggle]

Aug 7, 2017 21:46:03 GMT @rgd976 said:

The N9 was proposed to have an extra bus per hour Sun/Thur nights, with a reduction at weekends.
However if the Piccadilly Line is in a shambolic state at weekend nights, I can't see how TfL can rubber stamp a frequency reduction on this route, or the N97 (yet)

Oh dear another self inflicted wound that will stop Surface Transport realising their £ savings because the Choob can't manage staff recruitment and training properly. Likely to take months to resolve too.

[ian]

I wonder whether night routes need to be looked at more generally? For example, I cannot help but notice that many recent changes are creating separate N prefixed routes against the 24-hour standardised versions we had before (266, 83, 140...) We obviously now have a real mix of radial and orbital routes, 24-hour, N and weekend routes, ones that parallel train and tube lines and some that don't.
The kind of thing I am thinking about is (for example) whether some routes should start earlier? in most cases traffic is not so bad at say 10 or 11 pm so could the extended night bus routes start at those times since they are not tube/train-dependent? i can see it might make the system less standard but then we are doing that anyway. Should some of the weekend routes operate 24/7 etc?

[redexpress]

Aug 8, 2017 9:27:08 GMT ian said:

I wonder whether night routes need to be looked at more generally? For example, I cannot help but notice that many recent changes are creating separate N prefixed routes against the 24-hour standardised versions we had before (266, 83, 140...) We obviously now have a real mix of radial and orbital routes, 24-hour, N and weekend routes, ones that parallel train and tube lines and some that don't.
The kind of thing I am thinking about is (for example) whether some routes should start earlier? in most cases traffic is not so bad at say 10 or 11 pm so could the extended night bus routes start at those times since they are not tube/train-dependent? i can see it might make the system less standard but then we are doing that anyway. Should some of the weekend routes operate 24/7 etc?

Definitely agree that some night routes could start much earlier.  The night bus network used to be designed largely to replace the rail network at night so it made sense for it to only operate when the rail network shut down, but as you say, that's not the sole focus of the network these days.

I'd say that any night route that covers two overlapping day routes could potentially start much earlier in the evening.  During the daytime the overlap may be needed to provide the required capacity, and because a single long route would be unmanageable, but in the evening this often leads to unnecessary duplication.  The N63 would be a prime example.  The N133 could also replace both 118 and 133 in the evenings.  It becomes trickier when the daytime routes branch off into different directions though.  For example if you started the N83 earlier, you'd be cutting the link to Harrow in the evenings.  I doubt that would be acceptable given that people would now expect a major route like the 483 to run until at least midnight - in London it's only the really minor routes that don't have an evening service.

[sid]

Aug 8, 2017 12:43:08 GMT redexpress said:

Aug 8, 2017 9:27:08 GMT ian said:

I wonder whether night routes need to be looked at more generally? For example, I cannot help but notice that many recent changes are creating separate N prefixed routes against the 24-hour standardised versions we had before (266, 83, 140...) We obviously now have a real mix of radial and orbital routes, 24-hour, N and weekend routes, ones that parallel train and tube lines and some that don't.
The kind of thing I am thinking about is (for example) whether some routes should start earlier? in most cases traffic is not so bad at say 10 or 11 pm so could the extended night bus routes start at those times since they are not tube/train-dependent? i can see it might make the system less standard but then we are doing that anyway. Should some of the weekend routes operate 24/7 etc?

Definitely agree that some night routes could start much earlier.  The night bus network used to be designed largely to replace the rail network at night so it made sense for it to only operate when the rail network shut down, but as you say, that's not the sole focus of the network these days.

I'd say that any night route that covers two overlapping day routes could potentially start much earlier in the evening.  During the daytime the overlap may be needed to provide the required capacity, and because a single long route would be unmanageable, but in the evening this often leads to unnecessary duplication.  The N63 would be a prime example.  The N133 could also replace both 118 and 133 in the evenings.  It becomes trickier when the daytime routes branch off into different directions though.  For example if you started the N83 earlier, you'd be cutting the link to Harrow in the evenings.  I doubt that would be acceptable given that people would now expect a major route like the 483 to run until at least midnight - in London it's only the really minor routes that don't have an evening service.

I agree with the examples mentioned and the 137/417 is another example that could be replaced by the N137 in the evening.

[redwave]

2/9 - N29 - New timetable in conjunction with 'Night Tube' . Buses will run every 8 minutes with short trips between Trafalgar Square and Wood Green no longer running.
Changes to daytime service posted under 'upcoming changes' thread.

[RandomBusesGirl]

Aug 9, 2017 6:06:00 GMT redwave said:

2/9 - N29 - New timetable in conjunction with 'Night Tube' . Buses will run every 8 minutes with short trips between Trafalgar Square and Wood Green no longer running.
Changes to daytime service posted under 'upcoming changes' thread.

Very interesting, as these shorts used to run for really long.
Goodbye to N29 bus centipede at Trafalgar Square.
However that means the Enfield section remains overbussed xD

I really like the early night routes idea. Outside London, bigger routes sometimes take over a smaller routes' section in the evenings - e.g Medway 101, in the evenings it does normal Maidstone - Gillingham then half the buses continue into Twydall as per route 182. Very cool solution.

N133 runs for extremely short, only 1am-4am. As if Brixton and Kennington traffic was this bad in the morning - it isn't.
N8 could start running early, at least to Stratford

[6HP502C]

Aug 9, 2017 6:06:00 GMT redwave said:

2/9 - N29 - New timetable in conjunction with 'Night Tube' . Buses will run every 8 minutes with short trips between Trafalgar Square and Wood Green no longer running.
Changes to daytime service posted under 'upcoming changes' thread.

Might want to defer that for a few weeks whilst the Picc Train Op issue is resolved!

[Deleted]

And so it goes on