[x-posted to uk.transport.london]
[original thread at uk.railway]

On 13 Jan, 19:03, Tom Barry wrote:

Recliner wrote:
The BBC local London news featured the Ealing ghost bus at 18:45 today.
For once, the bus wasn't empty, but wasn't overloaded either. One of the
pax who was interviewed was complimentary about the comfortable, modern
(06 registered) coach, complete with toilet.

Hrmph. *It also featured me being interviewed. *Is a bus more
interesting? *Actually, don't answer that.

Seriously, it would be slightly ironic if the result of the advertising
about this apparently wasteful policy (I'm not sure how much it costs
compared to three sets of closure proceedings) was that it became well
patronised. *There may well be demand for such services on routes where
the rail journey isn't particularly straightforward but normal buses
stop too frequently to be convenient end to end.

We could call it integrated transport.


Keep your one there-and-back service a week version of integrated
transport to yourself please! I'll opt for the rather straightforward
integrated transport solution of taking a train from Wandsworth Road
to Victoria then the District line direct to Ealing Broadway.

Want Kensington Olympia? Well take the District line and change at
Earls Court for KO, or catching the Circle line from Victoria to High
Street Kensington (just up the road from KO), or taking the train from
nearby Queenstown Road Battersea or Battersea Park to Clapham Junction
and catching a train up the WLL to KO, or taking the 453 bus that
starts at Wandsworth Road over the river and up to Kensington...

Anyway, the idea of having express bus routes (more than the meagre
three current ones) was actually championed by your best mate Boris
during the election!

By the by, can you buy booze on the coach? If not it's got nothing on
the withdrawn XC service! It was enjoyable buying and then cracking
open a can of booze on the XC service as it stood at KO, what with it
being managed by London Overground and hence subject to the TfL booze
ban.

One can still crack open a tinny when on a Southern train (on which
Boris writ does not extend to) which stops at Shepherd's Bush, KO and
West Brompton - all LO stations (well West Brompton is actually
managed by LU) - though one cannot buy said tinny on the train. I'm
not quite sure what happens if you were to alight that train with can
in hand - would you immediately become an illegal booze hound? I do
find the notion of these separate jurisdictions entertaining - the
'City Limits' end when one gets on a Southern train etc!