Paul Corfield wrote on 12 March 2011 11:21:30 ...
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 10:56:52 +0000, Tom
wrote:

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:03:32 +0000, Tom
wrote:

What's the 'barre' system? I had a google but couldn't find anything.

Strictly there should be an acute accent on the last "e". All barré
means is that a bus does not cover the full daytime route. Barré usually
applies evenings and Sundays and the route number displayed on the bus
has a diagonal line (or slash) across it to show that barré operates.

Ah, je comprends, merci. Essentially like our N mechanism for night buses,
except that (a) without the bit where sometimes N means an extended or
altered route, and (b) applying on earlier, and on sundays. And (c) using
an overprinted symbol rather than modifying the route number. But similar
in all other ways!

Err sort of. I think the barré concept has been in existence for a very
long time so the French are very familiar with it. The only UK
equivalent I can think of is the "E" suffix used on buses in Birmingham
which indicates a short journey. I'm sure there must be others but I
can't think of any.

Paris now has quite a decent night bus network (Noctambus) and each
route is lettered rather than numbered. Not quite as frequent as some
of London's busiest routes but a welcome development given what existed
a few years ago (i.e. not much). Many of the night routes stretch out
into the suburbs and parallel the RER and Transilien rail network.

Noctambus was the old night bus network with 18 lettered routes. The
new night bus network, introduced in 2005, is called Noctilien, and has
42 numbered routes preceded by "N", e.g. N24.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)