If You Want To Know The Time Get On A Bus
I was on three big red taxis today and they’ve had a software upgrade on the information display.
I haven’t noticed the time before, but I was away Tuesday and Wednesday and only took one bus yesterday.
Since I created this post, I’ve been on about six or so buses. All were showing the time! Even a very elderly example! I did see a New Bus for London pass and it looked like this was showing the time as well.
It will be interesting to see the indirect effects of this technology change!
Will people be on time more, as they should spot they are late, even when they’ve left their watch at home?
Will it cut watch thefts, as people might wear them less on public transport?
Will there be a clamour for more clocks on the Underground, the Overground and trains?
This Is Becoming A Habit
I had another letter in The Times yesterday under the heading of Bus Information
The rest of the country is lagging far behind London for maps and timetables — could rivalry be to blame?
Sir, Roger Sexton (letter, Apr 4) says that there are no controls on commercial bus fares outside London.
As a senior citizen living in a Tube-free London borough, I use buses a great deal and I travel a lot around the UK. Outside the capital, I find that buses run in an information-free zone, with no maps and unworkable text systems to check arrivals. As London’s excellent system is software based, surely, it could be applied countrywide. Or perhaps cities like Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh are saying that they don’t want any system that has been proven in London.
I doubt that information will improve, although a friend told how there was an item on bus regulation in Newcastle on Radio 4 yesterday.
Could Hebden Bridge Be The UK’s Second City?
This sounds like the sort of idea dreamed up by someone, who really does think that Yorkshire is the centre of the earth.
But the BBC has published a piece entitled The Case For Making Hebden Bridge The UK’s Second City by Evan Davis on their website.
This extract sums up his logic.
The suggestion that it is Britain’s second city came from resident David Fletcher, who was active in the 80s saving the town’s old mills and converting them to modern use.
His point is that Hebden Bridge is an inverted city with a greenbelt centre and suburbs called Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.
His point was that the real second city of the UK is a northern, trans-Pennine strip that extends the relatively short distance across northern England, joining the built-up areas that lie second, fourth and sixth in the UK ranking.
I think he has a point and treating the area from Liverpool and Blackpool in the West to Leeds and Sheffield in the East, as a megacity, may be a very good idea.
Davis says that it would need a lot of infrastructure, and there would be rivalries and infighting. But there’s enough of that in Manchester already, with one of the worst bus systems in the UK.
To be fair to Network Rail, their plans for the Northern Hub, very much fit the proposal for the Northern megacity and the government, especially in the statements of George Osborne, seem to be backing them.
Is there anything I’d like to see in the North?
I would like to see London’s local transport information systems and ticketing imposed on the North. And probably on everywhere outside London as well.
- I should arrive at any station and be able to find my onward route, by foot, bus or tram without difficulty or bothering any of the station staff.
- If say, I wanted to use a bus where my bus pass is valid, I would just touch in with my pass. Every town or city seems to use a different system.
- If I need to pay for my ticket, then I would just touch in with a contactless bank card.
- All buses would have fully disabled access and at least a separate entrance and exit, like most buses in London.
- I should also be able to find out the next bus, with a simple text-based system, based on five digits for the stop and a short text code. If larger London can do it, why do cities like Leeds have a system that is so difficult.
I shall be watching Evan Davis’s program tonight with interest.
Don’t forget there would be one great argument for making Hebden Bridge the UK’s Second City. It would eventually stop all the arguments.
You also have to ask, whether other megacities could be created.
- Newcastle-Sunderland-Middlesbrough
- Glasgow-Edinburgh
- Wolverhampton-Birmingham-Coventry
- Southampton-Portsmouth-Brighton
Are four that come to mind.
The Connection Between The First Tanks And The Classic Routemaster Bus
At first glance, it would appear that there would be little connection between Little Willie, which was one of the prototypes leading to the first tanks of the Great War and the classic Routemaster bus of the 1950s.
But I’ve just read this article on the BBC’s web site about how the tanks were developed in Lincoln. The article talks about the two designers.
The work needed more than technical experience, it needed two very particular men – William Tritton and Lieutenant Walter Wilson.
“Tritton was a brilliant engineer,” says Mr Pullen. “And he was a brilliant leader. He got things done.
“He turned Foster’s around with new ideas and new markets.
“Couple him with Walter Wilson, who was also a good engineer but a genius with things like gearboxes, and they made a brilliant partnership.”
It goes on to describe how they locked themselves in a hotel room and scribbled designs on envelopes and fag packets.
And the rest as they say is history!
Walter Wilson went on to form a company called Self-Changing Gears, that developed pre-selector gearboxes. I never drove a vehicle with one of these gearboxes, but I’ve sat just behind the driver on many a London Transport RT-bus and watched the driver select the gear and then hit the gear change pedal to engage it. The use of this type of transmission, was to make the effort of the constant stopping and starting easier on the driver.
Routemasters , it would appear had a fully-automatic version of the transmission, linking them back to the original tanks.
Life On A 38 Bus
The 38 Bus in London, is probably the route that I use most. I even used its sister the N38 to get to Victoria for the Gatwick Express in the middle of the night. Yesterday, I used the route twice, once to go to the Angel and the other to go to a lecture near the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. But then the Upwestbound stop is just round the corner from my house.
But I haven’t done what a Timeout journalist has and spent twenty-four hours running up and down the route from the romantic Clapton Pond to crowded Victoria. His article is here. This is a typical paragraph.
But there’s more to the London bus than keeping costs down. It’s fascinating about seeing the city from the top deck. Ever bother looking at the buildings above the shops? I’m not talking about nosing into offices and flats (though you wouldn’t believe how many people walk around naked with the curtains open) – it’s the centuries-old architecture pocked with the scars of history, with Victorian inscriptions and scraps of pre-war adverts. Glimpses of London’s former lives.
The 38 may not be one of the glamour routes, that have got a full compliment of New Buses for London, but as a working lifeline for connecting the people of Hackney to the jobs, shops and attractions of the West End, it is invaluable.
Do Security Vans Have A Right To Block Bus Stops?
My journey round London yesterday on the buses, was held up yesterday by security vans blocking bus stops.
Do Security Vans Have A Right To Block Bus Stops?
This picture was taken at the Angel and shows two vans blocking the stop. The driver of my bus wasn’t pleased to say the least. As two buses had already by-passed the stop, I wouldn’t have been pleased if he’d done the same!
Did The Tube Strike Show The Value Of Cashless Buses?
We won’t know yet, as Transport for London, won’t have done the analysis, but as the buses took the strain during the Tube strike of the last two days, it will be interesting to see how much extra cash they took.
If it was very little, then most of the extra passengers were using Oyster or contactless bank cards.
But I did see a group at a bus stop, examining cards to see who’d got ones that worked on the buses.
I suppose, if that is correct, that Bob Crow, has shown Londoners how good cashless travel can be!
Returning From Liverpool Street Station
I can walk from Liverpool Street Station at a push, but as the weather was bad with heavy rain and I had no coat or umbrella, I decided it would be better to brave public transport despite the strike, as usually you don’t get wet on the Tube or in a bus.
The best dry route home for me is to go to Barbican station on the Circle line and then get a 56 bus up to my house, but that station was closed because of the strike. So I thought, I’d take the other easy route, which is to go the other way and change to the strike-free Overground at Whitechapel.
As a train was at the station, I got it and it dropped me at Aldgate, as that was as far as it was going. But never mind, I could get a 67 bus from there to the other end of my road. But for some reason, there were no bus maps at the station and I didn’t fancy the heavy rain, whilst looking for one.
So I got back on the Circle line and went back to Liverpool Street.
At Liverpool Street, I did the sensible thing I should have done in the first place and that was take a train to Hackney Downs and get a 56 bus back the other way to my house.
Luckily the rain was kept off by the railway bridge and after waiting for two minutes I got a bus home.
I must get myself a new coat today!
Bob Crow Looks After The East End
The Tube Strike today, is a pain to many Londoners. But I’ve just been to Canary Wharf and back and things didn’t seem that crowded.
I even changed at Shadwell, which is Bob Crow‘s birthplace, from the Overground to the DLR, with no hassle whatsoever. So perhaps he’s making sure the strike doesn’t affect his part of London very much!
But then, Hackney doesn’t have any Underground lines. And probably never will, as the powers that be, think if you give the plebs in Hackney one, they’ll only want another!
A Pedestrian-Unfriendly City
I mentioned to a friend, who lives near Milton Keynes, that I might come up to see the new electric buses in the city. They suggested I come up and take one of the new buses to Bletchley Bus Station, where they would pick me up.
I got a return ticket on London Midland to Milton Keynes Central for just £9.55 for a journey that takes thirty-five minutes each way. Which I didn’t think was bad value.
There was information at the station about the buses, but compared to London, it wasn’t of the highest quality.
Clear But Fairly Useless Bus Information
Although, the bus stand looked to be all new.
A New Bus Station
But it was all very draughty and after waiting for twenty minutes, I didn’t see any of the new wireless electric buses going to Bletchley.
A New Electric Bus
Although a couple did pass without stopping.
Then my friend sent me a text to say, that they’d had a breakdown and when the AA came, they’d meet me in the central shopping in the city. There didn’t seem to be clear instructions about the best bus to get to the centrre and as it was a sunny, but cold day, I decided to walk, especially, as I could see a solitary lith with a map by the station.
A Solitary Lith In Milton Keynes
The lith said that it would be about a fifteen minute walk, so I set off for the centre. I didn’t pass any other direction signs or liths and eventually, I had to resort to the age-old device of asking a passer-by. I then got another message from my friend, who was still waiting for the AA. A phone call later and we decided, we’ll meet another day.
I carried on walking and found the shopping centre, where I knew there was a Carluccio’s, so at least I could have lunch before returning. Carluccio’s cafes are usually fairly obvious with their blue canopies, but could I find it? Of course not! I couldn’t even find a directory in the shopping centre, giving any useful information. It was a new experience for me, to find a shopping centre without instructions to find your favourite shop. So I decided to go back to London and took a sign pointing to a bus station. But the dreadful place had one more surprise in store for me. To get to the buses, I had to walk into the sun and didn’t see this beautifully camouflaged stone seat, as my eyesight isn’t a hundred percent, in certain circumstances.
A Camouflaged Stone Seat
I didn’t see it at all and it rapped me hard across both knees.
The Damage To My Left Leg
The picture shows the damage on my left leg.
When will those that design our pavements realise that not everyone is fit with perfect eyesight?
I wonder if a personal injury lawyer, would like to take on my case.
And then of course, there was no simple way to find which bus you should take to get back to the station.
When I got back to the station, I was wrongly informed, which was the next London Midland train back to London, so I had to wait for twenty minutes on a cold windy station with no shelter.
I shall never return to the most pedestrian-unfriendly city, I’ve found on my travels. And as my friend will testify, they can’t even get the breakdown service for the cars that they expect everybody to use, correct!
The Anonymous Widower 