Analysis of distances between London's bus stops
michalpaszkiewicz.co.uk
michalpaszkiewicz.co.uk
Unfortunately in my experience growing up in London, such zones really operated with informal unmarked stops. The buses would only stop at these points and would drive past someone hailing between them.
So it was no different from the usual system, except the bus stops were not marked and therefore useless to anyone not familiar with the bus route.
I've not played Cities, but interested to know the usual stumbling blocks to build such a system. Too large a city to cover, and too expensive to cover extensively?
I believe, probably, it is mostly a 'me' problem. Maybe not, though. I just find it incredibly overwhelming when you get to the point where your citizens are demanding bus stops everywhere. There is already such a massive, established road network at that point and I have no idea where to begin. The funds are not an issue at that point (usually) because the city is large enough that money is kind of rolling in. It is more just the size of the city. It will need A LOT of bus stops, which makes sense... so I guess it is more just the overwhelming nature of the task.
Would it perhaps make more sense and be much less overwhelming if I were to be placing at least some bus stops as I progress through the earlier half of the game? Of course it would. Now, there are times where it wouldn't be as economically feasible, of course. Money flows much more freely in the later game, I have noticed. But, it would definitely ease the burden later in the game as far as having such a large city to cover. Then there is the question of 'is this bus stop too close/too far from the last one?'
I think it is really just the scale at which I have to place them and lack of preparation on my part (which is my life in general with pretty terrible ADHD).
Highly suggest giving that game a try, though. It's pretty incredible.
That's an interesting idea. Just thinking out loud, I wonder how one affects the other. I.e cheap rent -> create better transport links -> increased rent -> etc etc.
I know this is true with tube stations raising the cost of certain areas in London.
Funny the author writes that but these sorts buses do exist in certain cities like İstanbul. A special class of privately operated 'mini-buses' run along a predefined and long route, picking up and dropping passengers at practically any point along the route.
The system works because of the sheer volume of these buses and the simple, straight road. It almost resembles a river and the settlement around it.
And they are very, very, very bad for traffic in general. Because they haphazardly weave in and out of traffic, and stop unpredictably, often blocking several lanes, to pick up people
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus#Red_minibuses
There was also an issue that TfL was removing seats from bus stops to stop 'yobbery', but leaving the elderly without a place to sit while waiting: https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/elderly-forced-to-stand-...
A lot of the new hostile architecture does a great job at making ordinary people suffer.
Even if you're young and healthy, but you pulled a muscle helping a friend move their couch, you will likely want to sit down on a bus.
But of course, a lot of people don't qualify, and others don't want to use a different service to others.
There’s Taxicard too https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/taxicard/apply-ta...
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5007804,-0.119582,3a,84.9y,1...
Including the H2, which came top of the list for "shortest average distances between stops for routes without complex branches".
How is this accounted for in the data?
edit: I completely failed to appreciate the distance - after doing a bit of measuring on Google Maps 200m is actually a really reasonable cutoff point, in my city at least.
It's fine by me, but it seems that I'm just not the target audience for busses.
For example, reaching from Liverpool street to Farringdon could take 30 minutes during peak times. I still have the image of nearly a dozen busses queueing up and trying to take people from the station.
I decided to talk very often instead of not taking the bus and it wasn't slower.
This is only true in extreme cases - very short distances, very heavy traffic, being able to take shortcuts on foot. The majority of bus journeys would be slower on foot by a large margin.
- 100m
- 761m
- 681m
- 371m
- 506m
- 335m
And since it's a tram this is a bit different since it doesn't have to contend with vehicles (it's extremely rare to be blocked by cars or trucks) so this 2.75km ride takes ~11 minutes and that first 100m hop feels really short. I don't know where my ideal cutoff is, but that #63 route in London stopping on average every 42 metres must feel really slow.
[0] - https://xkcd.com/303
and
that these routes are "stop on demand" - not stopping every 40m, just potentially if someone waves from a stop or rings the bell.
In central areas where demand is high, busses usually come every ~5-minutes. Even further out in the suburbs, the wait times are 8-10 minutes.
Bus rides are £1.75. You can take as many busses in a day, and it automatically caps at £5.25. You don't need coins, you pay using contactless credit card, or oyster card prepaid cards.
Unless there is service disruption I find the bus is at least twice as fast as walking, typically a lot faster.
I walk if the distance is less than ~30-minutes, but if I do take the bus I never feel like I've wasted my time or money.
Anecdata, but I can say the opposite is true in central London (London Bridge to Liverpool Street, for example) during rush hour. The bus takes about 20 mins on a good day, and I can walk it in the same time.