Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

Andrew wrote:
Motorists who feel aggrieved by the extension of the London charging
zone have some positive assistance this week with the launch of a new
easy-to-read bus map for London.
Easy-to-read? It gives me a headache.

I don't like it.

Or, download a super-simple version from:
http://www.quickmap.com/downloads/q20supersimple.pdf

Super-simple?

Not really.

Then again, London's bus maps aren't designed to make it easy to trace a
route, which is the style I'm used to:
http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/manbus.pdf

I'm not sure if that style is genuinely easier to read or if I just find
it easier to read because I'm accustomed to it. Has it ever been
attempted for London?

The real issue is that New York's bus system is a fair bit simpler than
London's. I have used it and "studied" it from bus maps. Your use of
and familiarity with your grid street pattern must also assist in
comprehending the bus network. The use of "uptown", "midtown" and
"downtown" as commonly understood descriptions of areas of Manhatten is
also a further help. IIRC many services are described in this way as
they run N-S or E-W (Crosstown?) - this must also help people know which
way a bus is going. We really only have West End and City plus some
district names which are very familiar like "Victoria".

I know the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn are more involved in terms of
service provision but your overall number of regular NYCTA routes is
still relatively small. I know there are commuter express services as
well but I believe they are advertised separately.

You tend to have only one route on many main corridors which assists
with map clarity hugely - in Central London that is pretty rare. We
often have 3 as a minimum and up to 10 or so on the very busiest
streets.

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much more
useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

The one advantage they do have is that they make an attempt to show you
exactly (for the immediate area) and approximately (wider radius from
origin) where bus stops are. That is a help.
(snip)

My impression of bus use in London is that it is broadly confined to the
use of single routes from origin to destination - ISTR a statistic that
only 4% of journeys involving buses, involved changing from one bus to
another. However, I have no source for that, so don't quote me! Maybe
I'll see if I can dig it out somewhere.

I think buses become particularly attractive when they are direct -
whereas with the Tube, people aren't anywhere near as put off changing
lines (because it's relatively easy to find your way around a Tube station).

Putting information on making onward connections by bus could make the
diagrams overly complicated, just to serve a fairly small proportion of
passengers. The only way I can think of to make a clear diagram like
this is to combine the spider and the traditional bus map - by using the
traditional map as a base, and overlaying buses from the current
location as individual coloured lines.

The problem with that is that where there are long routes that can be
shrunk in a spider diagram but will not fit into a traditional map -
this is the case for many routes on the central London traditional map.
The most useful connections will be those outside central London, which
wouldn't be represented by the map I describe.


--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Dave A wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much more
useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

My impression of bus use in London is that it is broadly confined to the use
of single routes from origin to destination - ISTR a statistic that only 4%
of journeys involving buses, involved changing from one bus to another.

Any idea if that includes night buses? I can almost never get home in the
wee small hours without changing.

Putting information on making onward connections by bus could make the
diagrams overly complicated, just to serve a fairly small proportion of
passengers. The only way I can think of to make a clear diagram like
this is to combine the spider and the traditional bus map - by using the
traditional map as a base, and overlaying buses from the current
location as individual coloured lines.

How about annotating the spiders to show interchange points, as on the
tube strip maps? So, for instance, on the Finsbury Park spider, the
Holloway Nag's Head stop on the 29/253/etc bundle would have a little box
saying "4 17 43 271 393", maybe with arrows pointing away on either side
labelled "Archway" and "Highbury & Islington" (or something, since not all
those routes go those ways). It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but
if you were at A, wanted to go to B, and knew what the routes serving B
were, you could look for a suitable C on the spider map at A. Even if you
didn't know the routes at B, you could perhaps make a reasonable guess
based on the destination hints. The key problem would probably be the
sheer number of boxes and arrows - there are a *lot* of routes in London!

tom

--
THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD'S ONLY GOT ONE ARM!

On 20 Feb, 01:05, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Dave A wrote:
Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much more
useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

My impression of bus use in London is that it is broadly confined to the use
of single routes from origin to destination - ISTR a statistic that only 4%
of journeys involving buses, involved changing from one bus to another.

Any idea if that includes night buses? I can almost never get home in the
wee small hours without changing.

Putting information on making onward connections by bus could make the
diagrams overly complicated, just to serve a fairly small proportion of
passengers. The only way I can think of to make a clear diagram like
this is to combine the spider and the traditional bus map - by using the
traditional map as a base, and overlaying buses from the current
location as individual coloured lines.

How about annotating the spiders to show interchange points, as on the
tube strip maps? So, for instance, on the Finsbury Park spider, the
Holloway Nag's Head stop on the 29/253/etc bundle would have a little box
saying "4 17 43 271 393", maybe with arrows pointing away on either side
labelled "Archway" and "Highbury & Islington" (or something, since not all
those routes go those ways). It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but
if you were at A, wanted to go to B, and knew what the routes serving B
were, you could look for a suitable C on the spider map at A. Even if you
didn't know the routes at B, you could perhaps make a reasonable guess
based on the destination hints. The key problem would probably be the
sheer number of boxes and arrows - there are a *lot* of routes in London!

tom

--
THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD'S ONLY GOT ONE ARM!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Tom writes ......

The key problem would probably be the sheer number of boxes and
arrows - there are a *lot* of routes in London! Absolutely, but not
only are there buses, but also tubes and trains and streets too. You
can't easily mix tube style diagrams (as seen in NYC or with spider
maps from TfL in London) with tubes or trains which also use this type
of diagram. theres only so many colours so spider diags are local
before all the colours are used. Thats why the bus map (Quickmap)
being discussed here is so useful/different. Getting all london on
one sheet is mega difficult but if you've got one in your pocket it
allows you to always get off the tube (when its not working) and
immediately onto a bus going in the right sort of direction.

Steve

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 wrote:

On 20 Feb, 01:05, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Dave A wrote:
Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much more
useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

The only way I can think of to make a clear diagram like this is to
combine the spider and the traditional bus map - by using the
traditional map as a base, and overlaying buses from the current
location as individual coloured lines.

How about annotating the spiders to show interchange points, as on the
tube strip maps? So, for instance, on the Finsbury Park spider, the
Holloway Nag's Head stop on the 29/253/etc bundle would have a little box
saying "4 17 43 271 393", maybe with arrows pointing away on either side
labelled "Archway" and "Highbury & Islington" (or something, since not all
those routes go those ways). It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but
if you were at A, wanted to go to B, and knew what the routes serving B
were, you could look for a suitable C on the spider map at A. Even if you
didn't know the routes at B, you could perhaps make a reasonable guess
based on the destination hints. The key problem would probably be the
sheer number of boxes and arrows - there are a *lot* of routes in London!

Absolutely, but not only are there buses, but also tubes and trains and
streets too.

None of which i'd show. Well, tubes and trains would get an icon, as on
current spider maps, but that's easy; i wouldn't bother trying to show the
railway lines on the bus map. Not terribly integrated, i know, but i think
the railway lines are well enough mapped (and well enough generally known)
that they don't need to be laid out on the bus map.

You can't easily mix tube style diagrams (as seen in NYC or with spider
maps from TfL in London) with tubes or trains which also use this type
of diagram. theres only so many colours so spider diags are local
before all the colours are used. Thats why the bus map (Quickmap) being
discussed here is so useful/different. Getting all london on one sheet
is mega difficult but if you've got one in your pocket it allows you to
always get off the tube (when its not working) and immediately onto a
bus going in the right sort of direction.

True - i'm talking about an improved local map, rather than a new global
map. To be honest, i think the London bus network is complicated enough
that a map of the whole thing just isn't going to be generally useful.

tom

--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that worked. -- Gall's Law

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Dave A wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much
more useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

My impression of bus use in London is that it is broadly confined to
the use of single routes from origin to destination - ISTR a statistic
that only 4% of journeys involving buses, involved changing from one
bus to another.

Any idea if that includes night buses? I can almost never get home in
the wee small hours without changing.

On further inspection, it looks like I was lying my face off. The figure
I quoted is for all bus journeys in Great Britain. In London, it looks
like the figure is nearer 20%, which surprises me.

Source: TfL Interchange Plan (2002), Para 2.19 (primary source was
London Transport Planning in 1997)
http://cache.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/inter_improve.pdf

Putting information on making onward connections by bus could make the
diagrams overly complicated, just to serve a fairly small proportion
of passengers. The only way I can think of to make a clear diagram
like this is to combine the spider and the traditional bus map - by
using the traditional map as a base, and overlaying buses from the
current location as individual coloured lines.

How about annotating the spiders to show interchange points, as on the
tube strip maps? So, for instance, on the Finsbury Park spider, the
Holloway Nag's Head stop on the 29/253/etc bundle would have a little
box saying "4 17 43 271 393", maybe with arrows pointing away on either
side labelled "Archway" and "Highbury & Islington" (or something, since
not all those routes go those ways). It wouldn't completely solve the
problem, but if you were at A, wanted to go to B, and knew what the
routes serving B were, you could look for a suitable C on the spider map
at A. Even if you didn't know the routes at B, you could perhaps make a
reasonable guess based on the destination hints. The key problem would
probably be the sheer number of boxes and arrows - there are a *lot* of
routes in London!

Perhaps it would be better to limit it to important destinations which
are reachable by bus within a practical time frame - say an hour
(average journey time to work for those travelling by bus is 39 mins
across London; 47 mins in central London). For example, from Notting
Hill Gate there are 10 daytime bus routes covering most destinations
reachable within an hour by bus from there, except a few which could be
noted in the way you suggest - e.g. Clapham Junction, Barnes, Holborn.


--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 23:13:13 +0000, Dave A wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Dave A wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much
more useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.

They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.

My impression of bus use in London is that it is broadly confined to
the use of single routes from origin to destination - ISTR a statistic
that only 4% of journeys involving buses, involved changing from one
bus to another.

Any idea if that includes night buses? I can almost never get home in
the wee small hours without changing.

On further inspection, it looks like I was lying my face off. The figure
I quoted is for all bus journeys in Great Britain. In London, it looks
like the figure is nearer 20%, which surprises me.

Source: TfL Interchange Plan (2002), Para 2.19 (primary source was
London Transport Planning in 1997)
http://cache.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/inter_improve.pdf

Thanks for owning up ;-)

In my own experience I have to change buses quite a lot to make any
number of even quite local journeys. It is impossible for me to reach
the central area from where I live without changing buses - admittedly
only one change gets me onto a good spread of radial routes into zone 1.

My observations would also suggest that substantial volumes of people do
change buses in order to make their journeys despite the relative
richness of London's bus network. The easy availability of capped bus
fares via Oyster PAYG may inadvertently encourage this trend as would
the introduction of transfer tickets offering discounts. One simple
example of the extent of transfer between services is somewhere like
Silver St in Edmonton. Large numbers of people get off route 34 (east -
west) to change onto north-south routes at this point. This pattern is
repeated all over London. I'm actually surprised the figure is as low
as 20%.

Perhaps it would be better to limit it to important destinations which
are reachable by bus within a practical time frame - say an hour
(average journey time to work for those travelling by bus is 39 mins
across London; 47 mins in central London). For example, from Notting
Hill Gate there are 10 daytime bus routes covering most destinations
reachable within an hour by bus from there, except a few which could be
noted in the way you suggest - e.g. Clapham Junction, Barnes, Holborn.

The problem with your suggestion is that it relies on various parameters
that have different meanings to people. What is an "important
destination"? The destination for each individual passenger is
"important" to them and an awful lot of maps will not show such places -
especially if a change of bus is needed.

What is a practical time frame? - this must vary depending on whether
you are time rich or time poor as well as the activity that you will do
when you complete your journey. Finally a time based parameter will
unravel given the variability in journey times over the operating day
and it again does not deal with peoples' willingness to travel for a
long period by bus if overall they consider the bus to the best mode for
them given other factors like affordability.

I sometimes travel by bus even though "logic" would dictate that the
tube or a train would be more "sensible".
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 23:13:13 +0000, Dave A wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Dave A wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:59:02 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

I will say that your spider maps are much easier to read and much
more useful than the maps we have posted at bus stops.
They are fine if there is a direct bus from the stop you are standing
at. They are hopeless if your journey requires interchange to another
service at some point. There is no sense of there being a network with
spider maps which I believe is counterproductive when you have a network
which is as dense as London's and where the move to shorter routes over
the last 4 decades means changing services is much more of a necessity.
There is little to guide people as to how to accomplish such journeys if
they are relatively unfamiliar with the bus network.
My impression of bus use in London is that it is broadly confined to
the use of single routes from origin to destination - ISTR a statistic
that only 4% of journeys involving buses, involved changing from one
bus to another.
Any idea if that includes night buses? I can almost never get home in
the wee small hours without changing.
On further inspection, it looks like I was lying my face off. The figure
I quoted is for all bus journeys in Great Britain. In London, it looks
like the figure is nearer 20%, which surprises me.

Source: TfL Interchange Plan (2002), Para 2.19 (primary source was
London Transport Planning in 1997)
http://cache.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/inter_improve.pdf

Thanks for owning up ;-)

In my own experience I have to change buses quite a lot to make any
number of even quite local journeys. It is impossible for me to reach
the central area from where I live without changing buses - admittedly
only one change gets me onto a good spread of radial routes into zone 1.

My observations would also suggest that substantial volumes of people do
change buses in order to make their journeys despite the relative
richness of London's bus network. The easy availability of capped bus
fares via Oyster PAYG may inadvertently encourage this trend as would
the introduction of transfer tickets offering discounts. One simple
example of the extent of transfer between services is somewhere like
Silver St in Edmonton. Large numbers of people get off route 34 (east -
west) to change onto north-south routes at this point. This pattern is
repeated all over London. I'm actually surprised the figure is as low
as 20%.

I think that for many locations in inner London, changing bus is often
just not necessary, as the spread of routes from most inner London hubs
covers most of the surrounding area. Saying that, I should have done a
common sense check before quoting a silly statistic - there are
stampedes in the morning in Shepherd's Bush when a 207 unloads behind a
loading 49.

(Incidentally, I was very bemused to find that the 49 was receiving no
service enhancement at all from the C-charge extension, unlike
practically every other route in the area, and despite being completely
full in the morning peak from Shepherd's Bush and often skipping all
stops on Holland Road. The C1 extension is welcome, but it was never
intended to be routed along Holland Road, and it's hopelessly slow
around Earl's Court.)

Perhaps it would be better to limit it to important destinations which
are reachable by bus within a practical time frame - say an hour
(average journey time to work for those travelling by bus is 39 mins
across London; 47 mins in central London). For example, from Notting
Hill Gate there are 10 daytime bus routes covering most destinations
reachable within an hour by bus from there, except a few which could be
noted in the way you suggest - e.g. Clapham Junction, Barnes, Holborn.

The problem with your suggestion is that it relies on various parameters
that have different meanings to people. What is an "important
destination"? The destination for each individual passenger is
"important" to them and an awful lot of maps will not show such places -
especially if a change of bus is needed.

Certainly true - but then the opposite is also true, where you can show
everywhere and end up with a map that confuses most for the benefit of a
few (which was the reason for switching to spider maps anyway).

What is a practical time frame? - this must vary depending on whether
you are time rich or time poor as well as the activity that you will do
when you complete your journey. Finally a time based parameter will
unravel given the variability in journey times over the operating day
and it again does not deal with peoples' willingness to travel for a
long period by bus if overall they consider the bus to the best mode for
them given other factors like affordability.

Very true. However, I would suggest that people who are set on using the
bus for affordability reasons may also be more willing to work out
routes for themselves - that's my experience from students, at least.

I sometimes travel by bus even though "logic" would dictate that the
tube or a train would be more "sensible".

Snap. Often I just like the view out the window!

--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

Dave A wrote:

The problem with that is that where there are long routes that can be
shrunk in a spider diagram but will not fit into a traditional map -
this is the case for many routes on the central London traditional
map. The most useful connections will be those outside central London,
which wouldn't be represented by the map I describe.

I (still) hate the spider maps.

I'd like bus shelters to bear accurate mathematically distorted geographical
maps, where, for instance, distance from the centre of the map is
proportional to the square root of the actual distance on the ground, and
any super-long routes have an arrow at the edge of the map listing further
destinations. Each group of routes which serve the same local stops would be
shown as a single coloured line, which then branches into the different
routes towards the edge of the map.... this would be similar to the way that
the tube map on the wall at Holborn shows you instantly that there are four
platforms for four types of journey, and only by examining the edges of the
map do you realise that there are multiple destanations from three of the
four platforms. Routes which zigzag around crossing and recrossing other
routes from the same stop would have to be given their own coloured line to
prevent confusion.

On Feb 20, 2:40 pm, "John Rowland"
wrote:
I'd like bus shelters to bear accurate mathematically distorted geographical
maps, where, for instance, distance from the centre of the map is
proportional to the square root of the actual distance on the ground, and
any super-long routes have an arrow at the edge of the map listing further
destinations.

How do you handle the case where two bus routes share the same stretch
of road, diverge, and then rejoin at another point? These need to
intersect on the map, but both the mileage on the ground, and the time
taken to get there will differ.

--
Abi

wrote:
On Feb 20, 2:40 pm, "John Rowland"
wrote:

I'd like bus shelters to bear accurate mathematically distorted
geographical maps, where, for instance, distance from the centre of
the map is proportional to the square root of the actual distance on
the ground, and any super-long routes have an arrow at the edge of
the map listing further destinations.

How do you handle the case where two bus routes share the same stretch
of road, diverge, and then rejoin at another point?

You either give them different colours, or you show them as separating and
converging like the Northern Line - whichever makes the map easier to
understand (which would depend on what else was going on in the map).