TfL 2012 fare increases

[Deerfold]

Centrebus have the new ticket machines, but the drivers seem confused by them! I think Uno will hate being tracked, as they'll struggle to run early, hang about at the station chatting to other drivers or even skip parts of the route completely at night.

Good news for passengers, obviously, though!

I wonder if these new machines will allow for a smartcard for payment, as that would mean I'd ditch my annual season ticket and use PAYG. I have the season for convenience, so actually pay more per year than probably buying even daily tickets on the days I actually take the bus (get a lift, don't travel, walk etc!).

I was shocked by Uno's website. Almost all the timetables on it are out of date. There's a comment at the top of the home page suggesting there blog will have all the latest updates on their services. It's not been updated in months despite them changing many of their timetables a couple of weeks ago. I haven't checked their twitter feed. It does seem silly starting up all these outlets for information but then not putting correct information on them (I think I'd probably rather have no timetables than ones which are wrong - especially as some of them no longer serve parts of the route!)

 

[jon0844]

Yes, they've got a blog and Twitter and don't update either. During the bad weather spells (snow) they didn't do anything either - like say when they'd pulled ALL their buses out of service at around 10am one morning. The only place to get any info is the Intalink site, which has the new timetables.

The thing is, Uno isn't a proper bus operator in my opinion. It's run by the university, and they realised they could run services for the public too. They're too small to do it properly (email/write to them and you'll wait ages for a response if you even get one at all) but they've successfully won loads of tenders - much to the surprise of other operators like Arriva. Now they're probably the dominant operator around here.

More recently, they've won some long distance services to central London and Stansted airport, and a driver told me they had no spare buses - so if a bus broke down, they couldn't get people onto another one potentially for hours. He said he felt sorry for anyone that relied on it to make a flight.

I know times are hard, and they've - to be fair - got some pretty new buses that are quite reliable, but they have a large number of very poor drivers who don't care less about providing a service - and I pray that they'll get fed up and leave when Herts County Council can monitor them properly. My fear is HCC won't have the resources to actually monitor the services anyway.

 

[philjo]

Uno have started a new service this month to from the Uni at Hatfield via the A1(M) to Stevenage, Hitchin & Letchworth (though it only runs mon-Fri). Unfortunately it does not connect well with their Potters Bar service in Hatfield but it might give me an alternative option on occasions when FCC/ECML goes pear shaped.

Sullivan's have realtime tracking fitted in their buses but it is only available to their office. if you phone them they can tell you roughly when the bus will arrive if it is late (but not much use after 5pm when the office closes!) They have tweaked the 398 service last week so there is an extra run in the afternoon which suits me better for the trains at Potters Bar.
My experience last winter was that sullivan's did have some fairly accurate info on their website regarding bad weather disruption - everything else you had to use the intalink site (including the message saying that metroline had suspended route 84 from Potters Bar to St albans)

 

[radamfi]

TfL buses are frequent and boarding times are quick. HOWEVER, despite investment in bus priority and congestion charge over the last 10 years, they are very prone to traffic delays. Therefore real time information is arguably more valuable in London than on a relatively traffic free provincial town route where buses run every 15 minutes.

 

[causton]

Yes, they've got a blog and Twitter and don't update either.

The thing is, Uno isn't a proper bus operator in my opinion. It's run by the university, and they realised they could run services for the public too. They're too small to do it properly

Oh indeed. They're fine if everything runs to plan, but if anything goes wrong (one bus driver doesn't turn up, St Albans becomes even more congested with traffic than usual, one passenger takes slightly too long to board) everything seems to fall apart quickly, and you literally have no way of contacting them. I told Intalink that Uno are particularly hard to contact, they said they will send some kind advice to Uno and I haven't heard anything back. I suggest everyone who has ever tried to contact Uno and not got a response inform Herts CC, as passengers moaning all the time to drivers isn't sorting it out, they need some words from higher up.

Uno have started a new service this month to from the Uni at Hatfield via the A1(M) to Stevenage, Hitchin & Letchworth (though it only runs mon-Fri). Unfortunately it does not connect well with their Potters Bar service in Hatfield but it might give me an alternative option on occasions when FCC/ECML goes pear shaped.

I believe this is partly funded by the North Herts College - with 2 buses an hour Letchworth-Stevenage IIRC. It's a shame Potters Bar doesn't have many really good connections, just a bit too far away from the rest of Herts and a bit too far to have good connections to London (that allow you to use an Oyster card!)

Sullivan's have realtime tracking fitted in their buses but it is only available to their office. if you phone them they can tell you roughly when the bus will arrive if it is late (but not much use after 5pm when the office closes!) They have tweaked the 398 service last week so there is an extra run in the afternoon which suits me better for the trains at Potters Bar.
My experience last winter was that sullivan's did have some fairly accurate info on their website regarding bad weather disruption - everything else you had to use the intalink site (including the message saying that metroline had suspended route 84 from Potters Bar to St albans)

Indeed, Sullivan had a PDF detailing every route and their current situation... Uno had a lot of outdated information on their blog full of spelling mistakes!

I think they *tried* to improve communications, but not very well... Feb 2010: http://unobus.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html
"All services running as per timetable" posted once a day at 7am. That's brilliant! And when a bus breaks down at 7:10am? There's not even much congestion at 7am - if something was not keeping to timetable at that time of day I would have serious concerns! What we want to know is if the late night bus back from the station will skip the station - as they sometimes do - or if I leave work and the bus that's supposed to be here at 5:10 is stuck 3 miles away!

 

[shinkansen1966]

TfL buses are frequent and boarding times are quick.

This is the main thing I notice when travelling outside London: a lot of faffing about with people paying the driver with cash.

HOWEVER, despite investment in bus priority and congestion charge over the last 10 years, they are very prone to traffic delays. Therefore real time information is arguably more valuable in London than on a relatively traffic free provincial town route where buses run every 15 minutes.

Buses are so frequent in London, that the new real time info is a bit of a gimmick. At times, it is useful, because it allows you to a make an informed then-and-there decision about your journey home/work/wherever.

As opposed to waiting a bus stop in the sticks, within nothing more than a faded bus timetable and phone number saying "Traveline 0871 xxx". You can feel your confidence about getting around draining away.

On a broader note, I sometimes feel that commercial operations outside London feel like they're geared up to getting people to shopping centres. Where as London buses get you to places of work, or a Tube or rail station, to carry on your journey.

 

[radamfi]

On the Omnibuses blog, written by a manager of a major operator in Dorset, he freely admitted that they have given up on the commuting trips and therefore concentrate on shoppers and school/college trips.

 

[shinkansen1966]

On the Omnibuses blog, written by a manager of a major operator in Dorset, he freely admitted that they have given up on the commuting trips and therefore concentrate on shoppers and school/college trips.

Sounds interesting. Do you have the blog link please ?

Good point about the school/college run. Number of times I see provisional bus services with complex timetables tailored to the school day: 'not schooldays' , 'term time only' , 'operates 5 mins later when Wakeford Middleton school is partially opened for parents evening'.

 

[radamfi]

Sounds interesting. Do you have the blog link please ?

http://omnibuses.blogspot.com/2011/06/empty-buses.html

I will concede that he only says that they have lost the battle for inter-urban and rural commuters. However the general tone of the blog if you read it daily is that the car is entirely to blame for the decline in bus patronage and would happen regardless of what operators and government does.

 

[MikeWh]

Buses are so frequent in London, that the new real time info is a bit of a gimmick. At times, it is useful, because it allows you to a make an informed then-and-there decision about your journey home/work/wherever.

As opposed to waiting a bus stop in the sticks, within nothing more than a faded bus timetable and phone number saying "Traveline 0871 xxx". You can feel your confidence about getting around draining away.

I wish people would stop thinking about London as the central area. We have 3 TfL bus services in Crayford, one is every 7-8 minutes but the others are 15 and 30 minutes apart and less frequent in the evenings and on Sundays. The real time information is really useful for those routes.

 

[jon0844]

This is the main thing I notice when travelling outside London: a lot of faffing about with people paying the driver with cash.

Drivers can give change quite quick, but for some reason - even if someone has waited 10, 20 or 30 minutes for a bus, they still fail to have their money ready, or the right money.

Now, I know some people may not know the fare - but you still have the money ready. You don't get on, ask for your destination, get told and THEN realise you may need to go into your bag to find your purse and then unzip it and pull out loads of coppers OR the other extreme; trying to break a £20 or £50.

 

[bicbasher]

I wish people would stop thinking about London as the central area. We have 3 TfL bus services in Crayford, one is every 7-8 minutes but the others are 15 and 30 minutes apart and less frequent in the evenings and on Sundays. The real time information is really useful for those routes.

You don't even have to go out as far as Crayford for low frequency route. I have two routes in the Dulwich/Forest Hill area that have a 20 min frequency and 30 on Sundays.

However it is arguable that these low frequency routes are easier to plan using the timetable than Countdown, especially at evenings on Sundays when traffic is lighter.

 

[causton]

Tell you what, I hope these new ticket machines are quicker to use than the current ones... the longest thing about getting a bus outside of London is paying the fare and most of that I spend waiting for the driver to work out how to use the ticket machine.

It seems to be spend a while finding the correct fare stage for the current place, then a while finding the bright yellow child ticket button, then looking up every fare stage between here and there, then going back to the correct fare stage and issuing the ticket! (And this is between two major stops - even I remember the fare stages are 2 and 9 and have been since I started getting this bus!)

Last night I got a bus home from the station and this is a "brief" recollection of my journey:
1) Walk halfway down platform at Hatfield because every train stops at the far end.
2) Check departures board - "Please refer to printed timetables". Great!
3) Bus turns up, it is the local town bus which does a circle of the 2 new estates, heads past my house, then goes back to the station.
4) Ask for a child single. Bearing in mind there are only 2 fare stages, and the second is only because I assume tickets cannot be issued to the same fare stage, I get asked "where to?" I state my destination, the bus driver issues me a warning about how long it takes, still shorter than walking, go on then...
5) Two people new to the area get on the bus, asking to go to a place the bus went to 6 months ago but doesn't now. Bus driver informs them that he will stop near it for them (and lets them on for free as they try to pay with a £20).
6) 20 minutes (fair enough, I was warned) of weaving around lines of parked cars arranged haphazardly around an assault course of bollards, mini-roundabouts and giant traffic islands which meant the bus' wheels didn't stay straight for more than about 3 seconds - we were always turning! (How jonmorris puts up with this every day is beyond me )
7) The bus pulls up alongside a stretch of pavement. There is not a bus stop there anymore due to roadworks, where they resurfaced the path and have left... a temporary bus stop. One temporary bus stop to replace 3 which they removed - and the temporary one is on the other side of the road. No indication on this side of the road of any bus stop - good luck if you don't have a timetable in your pocket!
8) I walk the short distance to my house, in the dark as half the streetlights are broken and halfway through my walk the lights start turning off due to my local county council deciding to turn them all off late at night.

It's great living in Hertfordshire. I didn't even talk about the train ride
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I wish people would stop thinking about London as the central area. We have 3 TfL bus services in Crayford, one is every 7-8 minutes but the others are 15 and 30 minutes apart and less frequent in the evenings and on Sundays. The real time information is really useful for those routes.

I wish I could agree, but the local 20-min frequency TfL bus routes I use, I use in Potters Bar, which is outside of London so despite having the capability to display stop info TfL have decided not to!
(the 313 and 298, which are tendered TfL buses just like any other, ignoring the commercial 84)

 

[Old Timer]

In January 2012, London bus and tube fares are to go by 8%. Yet another inflating busting price hike.s.

Clearly you do not go shopping for food stuff.

 

[philjo]

I wish I could agree, but the local 20-min frequency TfL bus routes I use, I use in Potters Bar, which is outside of London so despite having the capability to display stop info TfL have decided not to!
(the 313 and 298, which are tendered TfL buses just like any other, ignoring the commercial 84)

Yes, those screens put up last year at Potters Bar as part of the refurbishment show the times of the buses as per the timetable, not actual running times. So if the M25 has a bad day & traffic is diverting through Potters Bar the screens won't tell you anything useful as all the buses will be late but the screens imply everything is on time.

 

[radamfi]

It seems the more frequent and reliable the service, the more likely real time information will be provided.

For example, the Tube is hyperfrequent but has had real time indicators for at as long as I can remember, at least since the late 80s. Arguably there little need due to the high frequency but it is taken for granted and indeed expected.

 

[button_boxer]

Going slightly off topic, I do like the way they do the real-time running indicators on the Brussels metro. They have a map of the whole line with lights showing the current locations of all the trains. I guess that's not practical for a long and/or complex line with junctions but for a self contained metro line it works very well.

 

[radamfi]

Going slightly off topic, I do like the way they do the real-time running indicators on the Brussels metro. They have a map of the whole line with lights showing the current locations of all the trains. I guess that's not practical for a long and/or complex line with junctions but for a self contained metro line it works very well.

They do that for the underground tram in Antwerp too.