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Post by vjaska on Apr 7, 2016 22:20:08 GMT
I remember when the 09 reg Enviro 400's were unrestricted as they would be floored to death either side of Brixton along Coldharbour Lane & Acre Lane as well as Clapham Park Road, Long Road & Clapham Common North Side which was reminiscent of the T & NV days of London Central. With the route 'returning home', the new EH's will hopefully allow a quicker & better journey as the recent transferred hybrids from the 3 into WL seem to be driven slowly most probably to match the time it takes for a restricted diesel Enviro.
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Post by 6HP502C on Apr 8, 2016 0:03:38 GMT
6HP502C - nice write up. That second video is like being a hyper charged Dart rather than an E400. The overcrowding video is unreal even though I have seen it before. The thing that's interesting is just how how full that N35 was by the time it got to Worship St - jammed to the windscreen. I don't envy the poor London Central drivers who will have to get used to the nightmare even with a better frequency. I suspect that may open the floodgates again *if* they are able to run the route OK and get rid of Abellio's worst misdemeanours. Thanks for the comments. That journey was the epitome of the weekend N35. Like other drivers, I just opened both sets of doors and let people pile in the front and back. With the service provision and lack of alternative routes heading south, it became impractical, if impossible to enforce fare collection. Typical weekend loads upon arrival at Shoreditch from TCR were about 35-45, Shoreditch High Street would see the bus full to capacity then after that it was a freeforall. Whether or not there was room to board south of there really depended on how evenly spaced out the buses were. Perversely, bunching meant a better chance of being able to board. If anyone has been around the block of night buses, it's Camberwell night drivers. The N155 is pretty lively too. I'm sure they've seen almost everything! Incentivisation was supposed to be beneficial for passengers and seems to work well elsewhere in London. However, for the N35 it led to the service becoming more capricious than reliable. Strictly speaking, buses with less than 4bph on weeknights are low frequency. The N35 certainly never warranted more than 2 bph on weekdays, but the low frequency model is counter productive when you have 5 buses an hour battling through the unpredictably variable Shoreditch traffic at weekends. The question is, what leads to better performance figures? Failing QSIs by letting buses run in service 5+ minutes late, or get late buses to cut out parts of the route with few or no QSIs in order to get them back on time? I think I know the answer and I don't think it leads to a good service for the passengers. The N35 is unique in the disparity in demand on weekends vs weekdays. London is gridlocked, even at night. Traffic conditions are far too poor to have an 8 bph night bus service running as a low frequency route. But at the same time, the high frequency model won't work on weeknights. People are don't like buses deviating from timetables when they run every 15 mintues or less frequently, not that many drivers give two hoots. One "hack" might be to run it as a high frequency route and shift more running time into the stand time on weeknights to prevent early running. But that introduces its own problems. I look forward to seeing how the night 35 performs and how any changes in monitoring will impact on it.
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Post by 6HP502C on Apr 9, 2016 20:34:52 GMT
I remember when the 09 reg Enviro 400's were unrestricted as they would be floored to death either side of Brixton along Coldharbour Lane & Acre Lane as well as Clapham Park Road, Long Road & Clapham Common North Side which was reminiscent of the T & NV days of London Central. With the route 'returning home', the new EH's will hopefully allow a quicker & better journey as the recent transferred hybrids from the 3 into WL seem to be driven slowly most probably to match the time it takes for a restricted diesel Enviro. Yes, the N35 actually used to be fun to ride on with the Enviros. I never saw any night route operated by step entrance buses, bet it would have been lively with NVs! I do recall seeing AVLs on it in the final weeks of LC operation - but probably wouldn't have ridden it as they weren't the most exciting buses to be on. Hopefully the few PVLs which are still blinded will make regular appearances.
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Post by thesquirrels on Apr 9, 2016 22:02:16 GMT
I remember when the 09 reg Enviro 400's were unrestricted as they would be floored to death either side of Brixton along Coldharbour Lane & Acre Lane as well as Clapham Park Road, Long Road & Clapham Common North Side which was reminiscent of the T & NV days of London Central. With the route 'returning home', the new EH's will hopefully allow a quicker & better journey as the recent transferred hybrids from the 3 into WL seem to be driven slowly most probably to match the time it takes for a restricted diesel Enviro. Yes, the N35 actually used to be fun to ride on with the Enviros. I never saw any night route operated by step entrance buses, bet it would have been lively with NVs! I do recall seeing AVLs on it in the final weeks of LC operation - but probably wouldn't have ridden it as they weren't the most exciting buses to be on. Hopefully the few PVLs which are still blinded will make regular appearances. In step-entrance days the N35 was timetabled to get from London Bridge to TCR via Shoreditch in thirteen minutes. I can well imagine the NVs being hammered to manage it.
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Post by vjaska on Apr 9, 2016 22:06:33 GMT
I remember when the 09 reg Enviro 400's were unrestricted as they would be floored to death either side of Brixton along Coldharbour Lane & Acre Lane as well as Clapham Park Road, Long Road & Clapham Common North Side which was reminiscent of the T & NV days of London Central. With the route 'returning home', the new EH's will hopefully allow a quicker & better journey as the recent transferred hybrids from the 3 into WL seem to be driven slowly most probably to match the time it takes for a restricted diesel Enviro. Yes, the N35 actually used to be fun to ride on with the Enviros. I never saw any night route operated by step entrance buses, bet it would have been lively with NVs! I do recall seeing AVLs on it in the final weeks of LC operation - but probably wouldn't have ridden it as they weren't the most exciting buses to be on. Hopefully the few PVLs which are still blinded will make regular appearances. Whoops, I realised I was on about the 35 lol. Only night ones I've seen in the flesh was when MTL London operated the 2 with M's, the original N109 under London Central with T's & the N3 with SP's. Never rode any so no idea if they got hammered.
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Post by M1104 on Apr 10, 2016 9:45:57 GMT
Yes, the N35 actually used to be fun to ride on with the Enviros. I never saw any night route operated by step entrance buses, bet it would have been lively with NVs! I do recall seeing AVLs on it in the final weeks of LC operation - but probably wouldn't have ridden it as they weren't the most exciting buses to be on. Hopefully the few PVLs which are still blinded will make regular appearances. Whoops, I realised I was on about the 35 lol. Only night ones I've seen in the flesh was when MTL London operated the 2 with M's, the original N109 under London Central with T's & the N3 with SP's. Never rode any so no idea if they got hammered. The SPs on the N3 got hammered proper. Rode on one which then started from Victoria and was rather loop routed via the present 73 to Oxford Circus then as it does now as far as Beckenham Junction (i rode it as far as Brixton assuming it went that way from Victoria via the 2). The driver had maximum acceleration in forth* gear up park lane with the engine sounding like its at 2200 rpm, approximately 50-55 miles per hour. The best way to describe the SP on performance is to imagine the sounding of a euro2 DLA but with 270bhp and a musically nice sounding ZF box. I also once made the stupid mistake of turning up for work at Victoria Garage for 06:00 when it should of been 16:00. Going back towards the Northern Line i took an SP on the N79 which floored it along Vauxhall bridge road, which seems to suggest another night route that had a lot of step-entrance bus thrashing. I don't remember off the top of my head but i believe the SPs were also use on the N35. Also a number of drivers didn't like driving them as it requires quite a bit of muscle to stop the buses (throttle power was there but not quite the non-ABS brake power). * - top gear on those batch
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Post by thesquirrels on Apr 10, 2016 10:41:15 GMT
Whoops, I realised I was on about the 35 lol. Only night ones I've seen in the flesh was when MTL London operated the 2 with M's, the original N109 under London Central with T's & the N3 with SP's. Never rode any so no idea if they got hammered. The SPs on the N3 got hammered proper. Rode on one which then started from Victoria and was rather loop routed via the present 73 to Oxford Circus then as it does now as far as Beckenham Junction (i rode it as far as Brixton assuming it went that way from Victoria via the 2). The driver had maximum acceleration in forth* gear up park lane with the engine sounding like its at 2200 rpm, approximately 50-55 miles per hour. The best way to describe the SP on performance is to imagine the sounding of a euro2 DLA but with 270bhp and a musically nice sounding ZF box. I also once made the stupid mistake of turning up for work at Victoria Garage for 06:00 when it should of been 16:00. Going back towards the Northern Line i took an SP on the N79 which floored it along Vauxhall bridge road, which seems to suggest another night route that had a lot of step-entrance bus thrashing. I don't remember of the top of my head but i believe the SPs were also use on the N35. Also a number of drivers didn't like driving them as it requires quite a bit of muscle to stop the buses (throttle power was there but not quite the non-ABS brake power). * - top gear on those batch +1 on the presence of SPs on the N35 (haven't seen in the flesh but have seen pictures). No doubt they got around on the night routes because they could make up time in a way that Ts (mostly) couldn't. Little discussed on here but there were some pretty serious reliability issues on the pre-2000 night bus network and fast buses could be slipped out onto routes with traditionally more 'ploddy' types. I am told by a local to the N2 that in MTL days the ex-London Suburban Olympians (latterly 4, 271 and W7) were known to slip out in place of Metrobuses. Leaside unofficially allocated its route 253 Olympians to the N83 during the later years of SFs tenure on that route.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2016 11:16:36 GMT
In respect of the proposed discontinuation of the Tottenham Court Road to Soreditch section, today's generation really don't know how lucky they are to have such an extensive network of Night Buses and 24-hour routes. In past decades, people often had a walk of 2-3 miles in the early hours of the morning either to their destination or to connect with another service. There are currently SIX all night services (excluding the N35) serving Old Street Station. I can walk from Old Street Station to Shorditch in around 8-12 minutes. People with limited mobility don't generally travel at night and so I don't see any hardship in the proposal.
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Post by snoggle on Apr 10, 2016 11:41:46 GMT
In respect of the proposed discontinuation of the Tottenham Court Road to Soreditch section, today's generation really don't know how lucky they are to have such an extensive network of Night Buses and 24-hour routes. In past decades, people often had a walk of 2-3 miles in the early hours of the morning either to their destination or to connect with another service. There are currently SIX all night services (excluding the N35) serving Old Street Station. I can walk from Old Street Station to Shorditch in around 8-12 minutes. People with limited mobility don't generally travel at night and so I don't see any hardship in the proposal. The past is not necessarily any indicator as to what should be done today. Yes people can walk but surely the point of a good transport network is to provide a convenient and appropriate service? I've only seen the crowds at Old Street at once during the night and it was ridiculous. Vast numbers waiting for buses. The N205 is often chronically overloaded. The N214 I was on was stuffed full of people. There is also an issue, not directly the responsibility of TfL, of managing crowding of people waiting for services. Forcing people to walk from Clerkenwell / Old St to pick up the N35 is likely to exacerbate the volume of inebriated, excited people in the Shoreditch area and increase waiting volumes at the N35's start stop. I would expect TfL to have some proper understanding of what goes on at night and to design services appropriately. Perhaps I'm expecting too much?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2016 16:18:47 GMT
The 214 is every 20 minutes between Midnight and 5AM. Perhaps it should be given double deck vehicles The 30-minute service on the N205 should be increased to 20 minutes Is there any procedure for drivers working at night to report excessive loadings and for such reports to be seen by those who can do something about it? I have seen this negative view of London's Night Bus network on the web QUOTE A London night bus, 'a must for all fans of vomit, paranoid schizophrenics and R&B played through tinny mobile-phone speakers'. UNQUOTE
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Post by vjaska on Apr 10, 2016 16:45:08 GMT
The 214 is every 20 minutes between Midnight and 5AM. Perhaps it should be given double deck vehicles The 30-minute service on the N205 should be increased to 20 minutes Is there any procedure for drivers working at night to report excessive loadings and for such reports to be seen by those who can do something about it? I have seen this negative view of London's Night Bus network on the web QUOTE A London night bus, 'a must for all fans of vomit, paranoid schizophrenics and R&B played through tinny mobile-phone speakers'. UNQUOTE There are potential issues in the Highgate area which could thwart deckers being used on the 214 such as low trees and/or residents.
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Post by snoggle on Apr 10, 2016 17:35:47 GMT
The 214 is every 20 minutes between Midnight and 5AM. Perhaps it should be given double deck vehicles The 30-minute service on the N205 should be increased to 20 minutes Is there any procedure for drivers working at night to report excessive loadings and for such reports to be seen by those who can do something about it? I have seen this negative view of London's Night Bus network on the web QUOTE A London night bus, 'a must for all fans of vomit, paranoid schizophrenics and R&B played through tinny mobile-phone speakers'. UNQUOTE Shock horror ignorant commentators make trite remarks about the night bus network. I don't use night buses very much but I've used various different ones and never felt unsafe. I've felt a bit "out of place" being stone cold sober amongst so many inebriated people but you can that experience at 2000 hrs in the City on a Friday night! The N205 is already x20 at weekends when it is busiest. It can still be busy. Stagecoach London 15106 N205 Liverpool Street by plcd1, on Flickr It is worth remembering that TfL do have night time supervisors, Centrecomm works 24 hours a day and can view queues at stops via CCTV. TfL also gets detailed card validation data by stop and I-Bus data will show where buses are paused at stops or in traffic for long periods. Furthermore I would expect operators to gather their own "intelligence data" about usage, dwell times etc so they challenge payment deductions made by TfL. If the service is performing badly due to factors outside of their control then they will want to know and use in their defence against "incorrect" payment deductions.
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Post by 6HP502C on Apr 10, 2016 17:42:26 GMT
In respect of the proposed discontinuation of the Tottenham Court Road to Soreditch section, today's generation really don't know how lucky they are to have such an extensive network of Night Buses and 24-hour routes. In past decades, people often had a walk of 2-3 miles in the early hours of the morning either to their destination or to connect with another service. There are currently SIX all night services (excluding the N35) serving Old Street Station. I can walk from Old Street Station to Shorditch in around 8-12 minutes. People with limited mobility don't generally travel at night and so I don't see any hardship in the proposal. By the sounds of it, we should be thankful that those bad old days are behind us. The bus network exists to serve more than the most able bodied, fighting fit people in the capital. Whilst your brisk pace is commendable, is it likely to be typical for those who've had a couple or are tired after a late shift at work? I'm incredibly grateful for the reasonable density for the night bus network - it allows me to enjoy the nightlife London has to offer and provides me with employment opportunities - I can take on those late shifts driving the last rail replacement buses of the day. I thank TfL kindly for not having a sparse night network that would leave me 3 miles from the nearest bus. I won't ask where you think those other night buses at Old Street go, but it's a fact that none offer anywhere near the number of links and interchanges across South East and South West London that the N35 does. The Old Street in itself is hardly a barren wasteland - it's in close proximity to several night establishments which generate demand for the route. The hardship comes in the introduction of a 1km walk from Old Street to a bus to anywhere south of London Bridge - or encouraging people onto the busy 243/N55 to Shoreditch, which introduces a fare/interchange penalty plus a 300m walk to the nearest 35 bus stop.
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Post by enviroPB on Apr 10, 2016 18:15:32 GMT
Thanks for the comments. That journey was the epitome of the weekend N35. Like other drivers, I just opened both sets of doors and let people pile in the front and back. With the service provision and lack of alternative routes heading south, it became impractical, if impossible to enforce fare collection. Typical weekend loads upon arrival at Shoreditch from TCR were about 35-45, Shoreditch High Street would see the bus full to capacity then after that it was a freeforall. Whether or not there was room to board south of there really depended on how evenly spaced out the buses were. Perversely, bunching meant a better chance of being able to board. If anyone has been around the block of night buses, it's Camberwell night drivers. The N155 is pretty lively too. I'm sure they've seen almost everything! Incentivisation was supposed to be beneficial for passengers and seems to work well elsewhere in London. However, for the N35 it led to the service becoming more capricious than reliable. Strictly speaking, buses with less than 4bph on weeknights are low frequency. The N35 certainly never warranted more than 2 bph on weekdays, but the low frequency model is counter productive when you have 5 buses an hour battling through the unpredictably variable Shoreditch traffic at weekends. The question is, what leads to better performance figures? Failing QSIs by letting buses run in service 5+ minutes late, or get late buses to cut out parts of the route with few or no QSIs in order to get them back on time? I think I know the answer and I don't think it leads to a good service for the passengers. The N35 is unique in the disparity in demand on weekends vs weekdays. London is gridlocked, even at night. Traffic conditions are far too poor to have an 8 bph night bus service running as a low frequency route. But at the same time, the high frequency model won't work on weeknights. People are don't like buses deviating from timetables when they run every 15 mintues or less frequently, not that many drivers give two hoots. One "hack" might be to run it as a high frequency route and shift more running time into the stand time on weeknights to prevent early running. But that introduces its own problems. I look forward to seeing how the night 35 performs and how any changes in monitoring will impact on it. Your posts were really lovely to read; but the underlined sentence is the very juxtaposition as to why these plans look beneficial for some but hinder other users of the N35. There is demand from the Clerkenwell corridor; a sizable chunk of it are stragglers that the N55 and 243 cannot pick up. If buses aren't late and aren't bunched together (yeah yeah, I know! ), at weekends the N35 is a useful relief route, worst case scenario. I am a young person who engages in such social activities at night. And annoying part is even if I'm not on a night out, somehow I gravitate towards Shoreditch at nights as an interchange point. I know that, if people at night on the eastern section of Old Street cannot locate a bus stop within eyeshot; and then be reassured that they can get a bus at least the majority of the way home, then they plant their feet and wait there until the Uber driver comes to the rescue. Imagine if at least half the revellers were to get private cabs home. People who go out round there it's fair to say have enough disposable income for a cab, and wouldn't hesitate to do so if they're not up for a sluggish trek home. Feeling kinda repetitive so I best get on with the sobering truth. This quote, combined with something said from a previous post compels me to think these changes are a disaster waiting to happen. Passengers south of the river lose a night link that goes through the heart of the City but the Tottenham Court Road-Shoreditch link is severed for improvements elsewhere on the N35, I understand that. The N35 gets a 7-8 min headway from Shoreditch to Brixton as it's where the most demand is seen on the route; I get that too. What I don't get is having the route end and start in Shoreditch thinking it's going to improve the reliability of the route; it won't. If the 47 had a high frequency service at night then it could be used for referencing sake. But the 24 hour 35 even with 8phb will be no match to the traffic that sees Shoreditch plagued with on party nights. Furthermore, the stragglers that the N35 used to pick up from the Old Street/Clerkenwell section with force themselves onto the already packed buses of the N55 and 243, should they wish to seek the 35 at Shoreditch. Long story short this reorganisation of resources isn't what's needed, more investment is. If TfL were smart, they would have the every 7-8 min headway on the N35 but instead have the reduced section, every 15 mins between Old Street and Tottenham Court Road (because of the differing route structure between the 35 and N35 at Shoreditch). If the unrestricted Enviros were still around lool, use the Clapham Common- Clapham Junction bit to make up time. I subconsciously think of the changes in frequency of the N35 with that of the N15, as those buses had their Olympics frequency retained unlike other routes.. That's obviously because they needed the increase, to anyone who has used any or both routes. Now look at the N15: every 7-8 mins at weekends when that level of enhanced service is not needed past Faircross. But TfL are more than happy to overbus this section instead of providing another all night service in the Dagenham area (it always throws me off when people say the N15 goes to Dagenham. They're right, it goes to the most northern point; and that's all the residents of the entire Dagenham area see in terms of a night bus). If the same level of resources were given to the N35 that the N15 got, then there'll be no problem at all. The biggest problem I think in general for TfL but in particular for the N35 is having to do more with less. Unfortunately it just doesn't work in some cases. It's not much of an ending this paragraph, but then again I didn't intend to sit at my PC for 3 hours trying to convey how much TfL are so out of touch with the travelling needs of night bus users. If only the top bosses swapped their statistical analysis for a 'hands on' experience and hopped on a bus; they'll be able to make rash decisions with more information. But it seems the ethos of Transport for London is to listen to the numbers and ignore the people...information bias is rife.
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Post by enviroPB on Apr 10, 2016 18:33:09 GMT
The 214 is every 20 minutes between Midnight and 5AM. Perhaps it should be given double deck vehicles The 30-minute service on the N205 should be increased to 20 minutes Is there any procedure for drivers working at night to report excessive loadings and for such reports to be seen by those who can do something about it? I have seen this negative view of London's Night Bus network on the web QUOTE A London night bus, 'a must for all fans of vomit, paranoid schizophrenics and R&B played through tinny mobile-phone speakers'. UNQUOTE I was waiting for you to finish that sentence; you didn't so I'll help you out. The 214 is every 20 minutes between midnight and 5am, during the weekdays. During weekend nights that service is enhanced to every 10 minutes. To put that into perspective, the route sees a night service headway more frequent than a headway during the evenings, which should suggest to you how busy the 214 gets on Friday and Saturday nights. Think what you want of the night bus scene, but if you aren't a regular user I politely ask you to not say things that are naïve in nature if you don't have a 1st hand experience (or any for that matter). Ask questions; please don't state factual inaccuracies.
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