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Tottenham Hale Bus Station
On Jul 10, 10:45 pm, wrote: In article , (MIG) wrote: On 10 July, 20:58, wrote: In article , (Mizter T) wrote: I couldn't remember if it was a 24 hour route or not, so instead of checking a bus spider map or the TfL journey planner I did a Google image search for "n453 london bus", one of the first thumbnails in the results led me to this page - which has an out of date photo of a bus stop at Baker Street which displays 'plates' for both 453 and N453: http://www.ukstudentlife.com/Travel/...uses.htm#Stops It's obviously taken after the introduction of bendy buses, as they both appear on yellow 'plates' with the advice/warning "Buy tickets before boarding" (and it's just outside the central London 'pay before you board' area too). So my half-remembered recollection of there being a distinct N453 service in the recent past wasn't so far wide of the mark! I'm not sure when the separate N453 was dropped and the daytime 453 went 24-hours though. Surely yellow plates came in some time before the bendys to soften people up for their introduction. I don't think there was such a thing as a 453 before bendys though. Or a 436. They made overlapping sections with the 53 and 36 which were shortened, and my impression was that it happened with bendification. You might be right. I'm not sure even though I was cycling amongst them at the time. It doesn't detract from my point that off-bus ticketing came in before the end of the Routemasters. They couldn't be scrapped without off bus ticketing being in place and well established first. Hmmm... that's not really right. Let me run through the choronology... * First off I recall seeing an installation of several roadside ticket machines at the new Waterloo 'bus plaza' - next to the big roundabout (with the IMAX in the middle) - quite some time ago - 2001 maybe, or 2002, I'm really not too sure (dunno if this was pre-or-post bendification of the 521). I *think* this was the first time I'd come across these machines - it was certainly the first time I'd used one, and I bought a one-day bus pass that was viewed with a somewhat quizzical suspicion by the drivers I presented it to that day (I think it was only a couple of buses). * The first bendy bus routes in London were the Red Arrow routes 507 and 521, introduced on 5 June 2002 - source: http://www.londonbusroutes.net/photos/507.htm Obviously as these were going to be 'buy before you board' routes, like all bendy bus routes to come, then roadside ticket machines had to be installed at all the bus stops served by these two routes. I presume the yellow plates (on the bus totem signs) with the instruction to 'buy tickets before boarding' came in at this point. It should however be noted that the 507 and 521 buses are only used by a very small sub-set of London's bus passengers - notably, commuters heading to and from London termini stations (the market they're essentially aimed at). * The next bendy bus route was the 436, introduced on 8 February 2003 - source: http://groups.google.com/group/uk.tr...fdea99d9aeb9ae * And a week after that, the 453 was introduced on the 15 February 2003 - source: http://www.londonbusroutes.net/photos/453.htm In the case of both of these routes, again, roadside ticket machines needed to be installed at all the bus stops they served. I'm not quite sure if any new bendy bus routes were introduced over the next few months, bit the next event I want to highlight is... * The central London 'pay before you board' area was introduced on 23 August 2003 - this was a big change and meant that passengers had to buy their tickets before boarding any bus in the area, whether bendy or not. This led to yellow plates indication the requirement to 'buy before you board' being introduced across the whole of the affected area. My source for the date is this webpage held in the Internet Archive - see the URL for confirmation of the year: http://web.archive.org/web/200308061...y-before.shtml So whilst the apparatus of the roadside ticketing machines *had* to be in place before the introduction of these routes, to say it was "well established" is I think wrong. For the great majority of passengers on the 436 and 453 routes, it was an entirely new concept (as evidenced by the number of people trying to pay the driver in the early days). Whilst the Red Arrow (507 and 521) buses had 'buy before you board' first, most pax on the 436 and 453 routes won't have been using Red Arrow buses and hence won't have been exposed to the 'buy before you board' scenario beforehand. Even after the August 2003 introduction of the central London 'pay before you board' area, any notion that this would instantly have educated all Londoners about the concept of 'buy before you board' wouldn't be right - many Londoners use buses in central London infrequently, and the idea that all Londoners are well versed in the ways of central London ain't true either. In essence, off bus ticketing got established as it went along, when bendy bus routes were introduced and when the central London 'pay before you board' area came into being. It simply wasn't well established before this, not by any means. One quick last thing - you seem to imply that all the Routemaster routes were replaced by bendy buses. This certainly wasn't universally the case - off the top of my head, the 14, 19 and 159 were converted straight from Routemasters to OPO double-deckers. |
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