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Post by snoggle on Apr 26, 2016 17:52:02 GMT
The 149's weekend service was also doubled at the same time as the 243. Interestingly the night routes running via Old Street / City Rd - 43, 76, 214 and 271 - haven't seen any increases. None of those routes at least touch Bishopsgate; that means they cannot add to the relief of that corridor & probably won't as this unprecedented passenger uptake require service that go further than London Bridge. By general consensus everyone seems to understand unprecedented demand for the night bus services in Shoreditch is on the eastern side of Old Street. All other bus stops are essentially safety nets in the hopes revellers can make their way home, preferably with a short, quick interconnection. For example, when I sit on an N205 eastbound it would stop outside Shoreditch Fire station and fill up almost to capacity. Then as soon as it gets onto Shoreditch High Street significant numbers would alight (if not there, then probably Liverpool Street). Those passengers (and it's fair to say when someone hops on a night bus they would go more than a couple stops; a couple miles maybe); passengers wishing to travel across the river jump on the N205, filling it to the brim, leaving the genuine passengers for east London waiting for another service. That's the problem I've noticed on that particular route, especially on weekends when bunching is very common. But hey ho, that's another Shoreditch night route for you! I obviously know where the routes go and I'm aware of what side of Shoreditch is busy at night. Your comment about the N205 sort of justifies the concerns about the revised 35 not reaching Old St. My observation about the Moorgate routed routes not seeing gains suggests that people don't / can't be bothered to walk from Shoreditch to Old Street to pick up buses. I wonder if the N205 picks up anyone doing the "short hop" you mention but in the reverse direction?
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Post by enviroPB on Apr 26, 2016 18:10:10 GMT
None of those routes at least touch Bishopsgate; that means they cannot add to the relief of that corridor & probably won't as this unprecedented passenger uptake require service that go further than London Bridge. By general consensus everyone seems to understand unprecedented demand for the night bus services in Shoreditch is on the eastern side of Old Street. All other bus stops are essentially safety nets in the hopes revellers can make their way home, preferably with a short, quick interconnection. For example, when I sit on an N205 eastbound it would stop outside Shoreditch Fire station and fill up almost to capacity. Then as soon as it gets onto Shoreditch High Street significant numbers would alight (if not there, then probably Liverpool Street). Those passengers (and it's fair to say when someone hops on a night bus they would go more than a couple stops; a couple miles maybe); passengers wishing to travel across the river jump on the N205, filling it to the brim, leaving the genuine passengers for east London waiting for another service. That's the problem I've noticed on that particular route, especially on weekends when bunching is very common. But hey ho, that's another Shoreditch night route for you! I obviously know where the routes go and I'm aware of what side of Shoreditch is busy at night. Your comment about the N205 sort of justifies the concerns about the revised 35 not reaching Old St. My observation about the Moorgate routed routes not seeing gains suggests that people don't / can't be bothered to walk from Shoreditch to Old Street to pick up buses. I wonder if the N205 picks up anyone doing the "short hop" you mention but in the reverse direction? The N205 comes very close to, but not hitting full capacity when it first serves Old Street. Stragglers are indeed picked up because the stops are very sparsely located on Great Eastern Street but when it arrives at Shoreditch High Street station towards Leyton; expect the bus to be full to capacity (exceeding it at times with standees upstairs) and to struggle to pick up any new passengers until Whitechapel. Conversely you would struggle to see more than a handful of passengers on an N205 from Leyton until Bishopsgate & Shoreditch where demand will pick up towards Paddington. It has to be said the westbound buses don't suffer from passenger flows like the eastbound buses; but then again the "hop on, hop off" passengers adversely affect the N205's reliability. The route avoids the worst of the road traffic but as for the people traffic; no night bus route in Shoreditch has ever escaped the effects of that.
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Post by 6HP502C on Nov 12, 2016 3:48:18 GMT
They were the business on performance, although baring in mind that when I was on that SP the driver had used full acceleration for pratically the whole of Park Lane from Hyde Park to Marble Arch, fortunate enough to have a clear road with all approaching lights on green. That would give more than enough time for a good uprated Connex Trident to reach those speeds. I'm not sure if the speed cameras were about back then as this would have been around the mid 90s. I don't know what the SP's torque settings were in conjunction with horsepower but I remember them being able to gearhold up to 2200rpm on the kickdown. Also the gear ratios to me appeared more stretched than on the Tridents, B7TLs and B10Ms (SPs taking that bit longer to change up in comparison but still with kick-butt acceleration) The sound on this one might bring back some memories - a rare DB250LF with a ZF gearbox, uploaded by "LVideo1000" www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCSqi3fJlbIThe pull-aways seems to get more aggressive as the video goes on, peaking with full F1 mode acceleration at 2:08. It certainly shifts, pity the likes never made it into London's LFDD fleet. With respect to the night 35, what do people think after 6 months? I'm a semi-regular user of the route from Shoreditch High Street and Camberwell. In my view, the weekend service is around 15 minutes short of cycle time! I'll describe a typical sb journey from Shoreditch at 01:30 on a Sunday morning. You wait about 10 minutes for a bus (7.5 minute service). Two or three buses show on Countdown as "due", but they are nowhere to be seen. An EH and a MHV eventually arrive at the stand together, with your EH destined for Clapham Junction pausing briefly before picking up at Shoreditch High Street. EH is absolutely rammed by Liverpool Street, with this lifeline of a route now becoming a de-facto limited stop/set down only service as far as the Elephant. You see a couple of out-of-service 35s going the other way sitting in traffic on Bishopsgate. At London Bridge, an empty MHV slinks out from the railway station and goes into service as a 35 in front of your EH. Along Borough High Street, a trio of northbound 35s are running together, at least one of them showing London Bridge. The London Bridge starter has disappeared into the horizon by the time you reach Borough station. If you can see through the steamed up windows, you'll spot the MHV from the stand at Shoreditch overtaking you at Newington Causeway, carrying around 10 passengers. It is never seen again. Despite the agility of the EH, progress is slow along the Walworth Road. It seems that every 2 minutes, you a see lightly loaded 35 barrelling it along the 20mph road in the other direction. Some showing Shoreditch, some London Bridge and possibly even an Elephant & Castle. You are overtaken by yet another 35 carrying little more than fresh air at Medlar Street, before the dreaded announcement comes that this bus is now terminating at Camberwell Green. None of the three buses that went ahead of you waited at Camberwell - but it's ok, because 4 minutes later, another 35 going to Clapham Junction pulls up and takes everyone away. Across the road, a pair of 35s showing Camberwell Green are sat at the bus stop with their hazard lights on. The service might be great between London Bridge and Camberwell Green, but what about the rest of the route? I have a suspicion that the provision from Shoreditch is actually worse than it was in Abellio days, because so many buses don't actually make it to Shoreditch in the first place. The route now consistently fails its QSI targets, though to be honest it wasn't much better under Abellio - bus.data.tfl.gov.uk/boroughreports/routes/performance-route-N35.pdfI suspect that data is actually significantly skewed by the decent weeknight service and it's much worse than those average figures shown on weekend nights. If buses are running in 3s on weekends, that means that at best, one is 15 minutes late and one is 7.5 minutes late - or all 3 of them are late. I think at best, 5 buses out of 8 every hour make it to Shoreditch during the peak period. One cursory look at the schedules and it's clear as day (night?) that they're unattainable. Buses get 14 minutes from serving Liverpool Street nb to departing Shoreditch High Street on weekends! On a clear weeknight, it takes 9 minutes from Liverpool Street to the SHS stand. On a weekend, it often takes closer to 20. Putting the negative recovery times aside, the running times along the route are incredibly tight. I speak to the drivers and they all say there simply isn't enough running time. I happen to quite like the way Go-Ahead run the local routes - they tend not to be as susceptible to excessive scratching as other operator's routes. Truthfully, it is fairly common to see 12s, 45s, 68s, 185s and 468s curtailing at Camberwell Green after 11.30pm. I suspect the night 35 is a difficult route to crew and a lot of the trips are tacked onto the end of daytime late duties. The certainty of delays due to under-resourcing effectively means that London Bridge and Camberwell Green curtailments are almost as certain to occur as the scheduled Brixton curtailments at the other end. The bunching is an issue as it makes for poor use of available capacity. If and when the route goes high frequency, nothing will change unless the route is given the resource required to run the advertised service. I still think it's better than Abellio, who used to throw people off buses at London Bridge and run the bus without passengers as far as Brixton - or abandon the Clapham Common to Junction leg as and when required. Any views on if Clapham Junction gets its 4 buses per hour? In the meantime, it is quite entertaining as a passenger to ride - it's up there with the N29 and N155 for bunching buses seemingly competing to reach the other end first. Anyone else a user of this route?
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Post by snoggle on Nov 12, 2016 12:08:56 GMT
Can't comment as a user of the N35. Based on your comments it looks like Go Ahead put in a bargain basement bid and are now struggling to meet the contract's requirements. How long before something gives and the operator has to put in a new, more costly schedule or TfL change the required service levels?
One notable thing from your post is the TfL performance graph. Past practice was that the graphs were operator specific and a new graph would be started when a route changed operator. The N35 (and day 35) graphs don't show the operator change other than one performance target level changing in P2 2016/17 on the day 35 graphs. I wonder why TfL have changed this but not annotated the graphs appropriately? It's good to see the continued trend but I do think there should be clear annotation of changed operators / targets. Same thing applies with route 40 - continued trend but changed targets.
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Post by eggmiester on Nov 13, 2016 11:47:38 GMT
I believe the (N)35 is currently under review for some enhancement at weekends.
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Post by enviroPB on Nov 17, 2016 14:22:32 GMT
I suspect that data is actually significantly skewed by the decent weeknight service and it's much worse than those average figures shown on weekend nights. If buses are running in 3s on weekends, that means that at best, one is 15 minutes late and one is 7.5 minutes late - or all 3 of them are late. I think at best, 5 buses out of 8 every hour make it to Shoreditch during the peak period. Ahhh, glad to see someone else has come to the same conclusion as I when I did (still do) covertly monitor service levels of the N35 from the comfort of my bed!! Surprised TfL took months instead of 5 years at contract renewal to tackle the N35. As suggested, it seems GAL severly underestimated the traffic in the Liverpool Street & Shoreditch areas; I'm certain that Bishopsgate is worse for traffic at night than it is during the day. Side-tracking for a bit; watching the numbers around Shoreditch at weekend nights, it seems if anything that there is a slight decrease of revellers at the trendy nightspot but frustratingly, private hire cabs have actually gone up. It's very common to see on Old Street, the odd DW or LT is sitting in traffic surrounded by Prius cars! No sane motorist goes through Shoreditch if they can avoid it, but this is a bus bforum so I'll get back on topic. As previously stated, I too noticed that around 5 in every 8 buses reach Shoreditch (exact levels under Abellio's N35) but what's even worse is that the Clapham bound buses don't make it to Shoreditch. Goodness knows if there's a knock-on effect on the likes of the 149 but it's most likely those passeners will stay put. It's too late for TfL to listen to me but I suggested in the consultation under the old structure of the N35 that alternate journeys should happen between Old Street & Tottenham Court Road. Late at night I still hear passengers on Bishopsgate asking for a night bus that goes to Old Steet mainly; a few Farringdon requests emerge for those with suitcases wanting to head to Luton/Gatwick presumably. Can't comment on the most southernly point of the route but using the N35 around the Camberwell & City areas; there is no difference in serviced provided between GAL & Abellio. I've yet to get a bus that's on time in either direction, and though Go Ahead are great in managing a reliable service during the day, it's a different ball game at night. Speaking as a passenger; more buses are definately needed and maybe a more generous running time and/or stand time. Maybe a direct routing in Shoreditch can help by sending buses to the old 78 stand outside the church. But then we get into the mess of the amalgamated 35 & N35. It's too pointless for TfL to send out another consultation to then gather and ignore the views of people. This a problem they have to sort out themselves. Bet they wished the Northen line Bank branch was part of the Night Tube!!
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Post by 6HP502C on Aug 15, 2017 16:29:46 GMT
It looks the from the first weekend of September, the night 35 will get an extra bus and more running time on weekends. The route has consistently failed its QSI targets since being introduced in April 2016 - but little sympathy as the hopelessly unrealistic running times meant this was 100% predictable. In reality this underresourcing has translated to a weekend frequency reduction between Shoreditch and London Bridge and unscheduled curtailments at Camberwell Green being the norm. No idea what the southern end has been like but I can't imagine it has been a bed of roses! Liverpool Street nb to Shoreditch High Street sb will increase from 14 minutes to 19 minutes, which is still a push at kicking out times. But it looks like the days of copious London Bridge turns, buses running in bunches of 4 (7.5 minute headway!) in the centre section and absolutely barreling it along the route are coming to an end!
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