please empty your brain below

Absolutely spot on DG.
It's complete lunacy to run a network of bus routes and not produce a network bus map so potential passengers can see where they go.
Totally ridiculous situation which must be changed back.
We've even got an online Underground map telling us where the tunnels are - yet twice as many people use TfL's buses and there's nothing.
PS - asked at Liverpool Street Visitor Information Centre on Saturday for a new Travel Option guide and was firmly told 'TfL don't produce bus maps'.
Mike's historical maps are superb. Highly recommended.
South Yorkshire Transport never had a bus map, they produced very comprehensive timetable books and maps for individual routes - but you were left completely in the dark about the geographical relationships.

It just fits into the general lack of direction that exists everywhere in the country nowadays, and existed pre-Brexit.
If TfL have sacked their cartographers, do they actually know themselves at an all-London level where all of their buses go?

If almost everyone uses online journey planning, via Google or Citymapper or whatever, perhaps maps in paper or printable pdf form become less important?

Google manages to put the tube lines in their respective colours. Perhaps they could be prevailed upon to map bus routes with a palette of colours, rather than all in red?
Or perhaps TfL just buys Mike's maps, like everyone else?
Mike Harris produced Maps are superb. They are more like the original Bus Maps of the 60s and 70s. I highly recommend them either in print or the digital download. He also produces a night bus map to the same high quality.
Just checked my local Spider Maps. They haven't been updated with the central London bus changes and carry 2014 dates. Though searching another area and I find one with the summer changes included. So even the digital spiders aren't right!
Are there any other cities (capital cities no less)in the first world that don't have maps available allowing open to plan a journey by bus across the city from A to B.

Welcome to crap 21st century Britain! Never mind, once we're out the EU I'm sure the funding will be there (and tha maps will be designed by unicorns) :P
Edinburgh bus maps online are pretty good (don't know about the availablity of paper ones though)

https://lothianbuses.co.uk/timetables-and-maps

(more specifically this: [pdf])
Cheers, I've used the wayback machine to download all 5 for reference.

dg writes: Thanks John! THE 3RD PARAGRAPH OF TODAY'S POST NOW LINKS TO ALL 5 MAP FILES.
Although I use a fair number of various apps on my iPhone, I can't get on very well with any travel app I've tried so far for London or any other city. I find that it is so much clearer and obvious whenever I use a paper map. It's my age of course, but there are others of my age using London transport. Travelling around Berlin last week was a doddle with a tram map and city transport chart. I still tend to use my central London bus map even though it's out of date.

I groaned inwardly as I read this post and can't help thinking that the corporate blinkers and evasive techniques are fully in operation at TFL. So long as we are customers rather than passengers then we shall be treated as commodities within the corporate financial system.
As far as I'm aware Hong Kong don't publish a bus map and there is no on line version (unless I've been looking in the wrong place)
London decision continues the trend of we know best attitude - passenger numbers continue to fall so we will make it more difficult to find information whilst senior "directors" continue to receive their bonuses....as PE would say ching ching
Meanwhile, Berlin's transport company BVG (Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe) annualy publishes a big yellow atlas (called BVG atlas), that features a geographical map of Berlin and its surroundings with all bus, tram, U-Bahn and rail routes with *all* bus stops displayed with names. The central area is enlarged and there are also detailed area maps for big transport hubs such as Hauptbahnhof (main station), Zoologischer Garten or Alexanderplatz. There are schematic bus, tram and rail maps of the region and every single route has its own half-of-page where the route is laid detailed and where one can find the frequency of each route. At 12.9€ it's a bit costly, but a great information source.
There's the OpenStreetMap Transport Layer:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/ 51.5205/-0.0879&layers=T

Unfortunately bus routes in OpenStreetMap don't get much love these days. If you can help update the routes, please do!
London is just way too big and complex to show all bus routes on one easy-to-read map. The problem with the quadrant maps were that they were quadrant maps - cut in the wrong place if you travelled between quadrants.
And all routes were grey, so you had to carefully check the numbers printed along. They didn't show stops to plan where to change. And there were no frequencies indicated either (once in an hour, once in a day?). They might have beeen good for some vague planning of your journey in a very painstaking way, but I see no practical use for them today.
A great example of an "I wouldn't use them so I don't see why anyone else would need them" comment there from Greg.
I wouldn't be that hard on Greg. His criticisms of the bus maps are all valid - they were far from perfect.

But as has been made very clear, all "today"'s alternatives have their disadvantages too. We really ought to have all the resources to hand. Proper maps, and timetables, and smartphone apps, and interactive planning websites.
Why don't TfL just do the decent sensible thing and employ DG as an adviser, consultant, and enlightened representative of the people? Simples. Job done. Nuff said.
In August TfL announced internally that they have awarded framework contracts for cartographic services to three companies: Pindar Creative, Pulse Media and T-Kartor Sweden AB.
The idea of TfL employing DG may have been meant in a light-hearted way - if so I apologise for responding to it in an over-serious way.

But the days of "person X would be good as a sort of fnachet-wrangler, let's devise such a job and offer it to her" are long gone. These days (probably correctly), the role description has to come first, then the job description, then it has to be properly advertised and competed for. During this extended process, person X has probably lost any interest she may have had, and moved to Timbuctoo.
Here's a map of all the bus routes in London...
http://allthebuses.herokuapp.com

...showing the live progress of the 5 members of the @allthebuses team who are trying to ride on all 563 London buses in a day - today!
I enjoyed this post. However, the fares cap override trainspotter pleas for updated bus maps. You voted Khan so that's what you get. Enjoy it.

It means he has to cut out the nice stuff. Let the other guy make his maps. This will statisfy the 0.5% that actually care about their withdrawal officially.

I have an app and can make out which bus I need to get and when. It's the price of progress dg, sorry.

And the guy that equates this to Brexit? Get a grip!
@Herbof

I'm under 30, and I prefer to use proper maps rather than an app - though I'm happy to have the map on my tablet especially when actually travelling, since paper gets wet and dirty


@PD

You are right, Hong Kong does not have an overall bus map, although KMB does sell a paper map showing KMB services only.

Private map companies also print street atlases which show bus (and minibus) routes.

The reason is probably that the bus companies don't want to be responsible for keeping such maps up to date. They don't even publish proper timetables to avoid getting complaints that buses are late.

If you read Cantonese then there are DG-like blogs and forums where there is more information than even bus geeks like ourselves can process.

@Greg S

The problem with quadrants is easily solved by making the overlapping areas larger.

They were very useful for showing which buses go where. If you need more information on specific routes or stops, then you look it up separately.

For example, I needed to find the most efficient two-bus route to travel from Croydon to central London (due to hopper fare). Using an app means you have to specify a certain arrival point, whereas with large bus maps one can look at all possibilities.
Could anyone provide a recommendation for a good (notice I didn't say "great"), free app for the bus and tube system?

dg writes: It's generally agreed that Citymapper is hard to beat.
Well, I don't use playgrounds and glasses either, I still appreciate their importance for many :)
I simply listed my arguments why I think the maps are inadequate for practical use.
There are many cities where the bus network can be mapped beautifully on a single sheet. London is not one of them. There many clever solutions however digitally.
The quadrant maps weren't perfect, but no other TfL product - paper-based or digital - provides an overview of the network.

It's possible to imagine something better coming along, a solution that isn't just a peephole into a tiny part of London's bus network, but that's all we have now.
Have to agree with Greg.

Plus TfL are on a hiding to nothing: if they do produce a map, some pedant will highlight that bus-stop XY has been closed for diversions for the last 6 months, and they'll have to pulp a million copies and be accused of bungling incompetence and inefficiency.

Also, Citymapper is better than a grudging 'hard to beat' surely? It's a brilliant app imho.
Nice to see this issue being covered. The removal of paper bus maps is ridiculous. They are far easier to use and check than going through umpteen layers of selections of website information and then having to pan in and out.

DG asked if other places don't publish comprehensive bus maps and there are certainly some UK counties that provide no info and some operators don't bother. There is no such thing as a comprehensive Singapore bus map either - just some partial "spider map"-esque stuff. Hong Kong has already been covered - I've always had an A-Z when there and have made extensive use of the bus network but it isn't easy to assimilate. It is noticeable that tourists in SG and HK tend to rely on taxis, hotel shuttles and the Metro systems. Little or no use of buses from what I've seen.

This is all about choice - any decent operation would retain a choice of information access. Instead TfL are just assuming everyone can fork out hundreds of quid for internet / web access and on smartphone contracts. Well they're wrong. I would also question whether the equality and inclusion issue has been properly addressed in abandoning this source of information.

I saved the bus map pdfs a few weeks ago in anticipation of their removal occurring. I rather think Mrs Arnold may be asking some more questions of the Mayor fairly soon given the ludicrous and now untrue nature of the response.
My five year son loves his copy of the South West London bus map - he spends hours pouring over it, examing the different bus routes. It's getting a bit grubby now, and as his birthday is coming up, I might place an order for a Mike Map
@ New Still Anon - each edition of the Quadrant Bus Maps has had a small level of error on it. It's inevitable given that things do change on a network that is inherently more flexible than rail. Also the quadrant maps do become less accurate if there are network changes but TfL have hardly been top of the class in updating the spider maps or even their website information when bus routes change. It took years of moaning and complaining to get the web info broadly correct and updated reasonably quickly following a route change. The cruel irony is that TfL can justify maintaining and printing a fairly useless Central London map for tourists. Meanwhile if you actually dare to live in London you get the big "two fingers" in terms of bus map information.

The fact remains that a printed quadrant bus map is by far the easiest way to assimilate the breadth and density of the network. Coupled with the ability to drill down on a digital map it is pretty much unbeatable. What is not unbeatable is a digital map that becomes useless as you pan out from a micro view.

I look forward to TfL insisting that the Tube Map need not be printed because everyone can have one on their smartphone. Won't happen of course because there'd be an unstoppable media and social media campaign launched within 10 nanoseconds of it being rumoured. Oh that the printed bus map had the same level of support.
I keep the bus maps as part of my map collection, but actually use a mixture of Google and the all in one transport map by Quickmap. http://www.stanfords.co.uk/London-Complete-Transport-Map_9780956481443
Of course that London Complete Transport map is pre West End bus changes as the the sample on the Stanfords page shows.
TfL cares no longer for the customer, this has been happening for a long time now. It's why I left, and so many more of the 'old school' are in the process of leaving.

The business has become so political that's it's employee relation and travel demand management teams are more focused on delivering a swathe of propaganda, rather than providing actual customer service. Each year, TfL fills the back room staff with politically aware private sector types rather than transport knowledgeable people. Spend one day in the TDM (Transport Demand Management) and listen to their daily gaffs... Jubilee line to Balham, London Overgroubd to Marylebone, confusing the Victoria line for the Metropolitan line.... I could write an entire encyclopaedia on this matter.

Go and listen to one of the current mafia of it's directorate team babble on about why they are so surprised bus usage has dropped. It's dropped because of the ill thought introduction of cycle schemes ripping away vital bits of the bus priority network and increasing traffic. A direct result of TfL action. Yet nobody 'upstairs' has ever muttered even the slightest direct correlation.

Instead they feign ignorance and use this as sum excuse to reduce bus services, further dissolve bus priority, and push customers towards the higher rate train service like tube and crossrail.

Take one look at a further attempt to cut London's busiest bus route 25 to pieces due to crossrail 'replacing it'.

If they genuinely cared, the 25 would have genuine bus priority with some sort of express service overlaid. 25 traverses through some of the more deprived quarters of the city, where the difference between a monthly bus pass and monthly tube/crossrail pass impacts how much money the have to put good on the plate. But hey...... there's a hop on/hop off scheme between buses supported with no up to date bus map to show your connections as an alternative.... what's the problem?!
Many counties/PTEs have drastically cut down on publicity, driven by austerity and the lazy 'digital native' viewpoint that it's all on the net- just as some people think that you don't need road maps when you've got satnavs. But it means that any possiblity of selling the network as a whole has gone.
In Central London maps were often hard to find- while Travel Info Centres are festooned with (paid for?) placements of leaflets for sight seeing tours, the maps were kept under the counter presumably on the basis that 'if we left them out pepole might take them'(once one had queued behind umpteen foreign vistors going slowly). How different fom Geneva where we were given one as soon as we booked in at our hotel, without asking for it.
Kelvin writes: "Go and listen to one of the current mafia of it's directorate team babble on about why they are so surprised bus usage has dropped. It's dropped because of the ill thought introduction of cycle schemes ripping away vital bits of the bus priority network and increasing traffic."

A while back, I went to a talk by Peter Hendy, the former TfL commissioner and a bus man through and through. He acknowledged that the fall in bus ridership was probably due to longer journey times, and attributed this not only to the cycle lanes but also to increased congestion in central London caused by more vehicles for hire (including, but not just Ubers) and more vans delivering stuff ordered on line. In his time, TfL had believed that the key to bus ridership was frequency and reliability. He felt they'd now have to consider journey-times too.

Like Daniel Farnes, I keep the quadrant maps in my maps collection but don't use them for practical purposes, so I regret their loss more in nostalgic terms. I'm not sure that's enough to justify continuing to print them. I'd be quite happy if the Mayor went back on his fares promise if it resulted in a better service in general, but since I'd have voted for just about anyone or anything rather than Zac Goldsmith, this probably isn't representative...
Thanks DG for the shout out! When I noticed the quadrant maps were finally not on the website, it was not a good day for All The Buses planning.

For now, the March 2016 bus maps are still available through Wayback Machine:
NW NE SW SE
Ah, whoops. Perhaps I should check the post links first.
@ Baldarasso - While I am sure Mr Hendy said what you reported it seems a rather partial analysis on his part. It skillfully sidesteps the cancellation of bus priority works and dissolution of the bus priority team within TfL once Boris Johnson became Mayor. Mr Hendy, as a career bus man, MUST have known there would be an impact from this regardless of cycle lanes, Uber or online delivery vans. The centre of London has been plagued with delivery vehicles for decades. They are nothing new nor is the congestion they cause.

If you remove expertise and a centre of advocacy for bus priority then the bus network will inevitably lose bus lanes and have one less voice fighting to preserve service quality. Nonetheless the organisation allowed this to happen with all the subsequent damage. One wonders quite what was going on inside TfL as they kowtowed to the Mayor's demands. You'd hope the consequences of these daft policies would at least be highlighted to City Hall along with the potential consequences.
It would be foolish of TFL to rely on Google maps to replace its own mapping efforts. Having a look just now at Google, you have to zoom in a lot to even see where the bus stops are, and then click on them to see what buses use them - and not every stop is visible (or in the right place).

Apple Maps is far better for buses - if you zoom in to the level that you can see buildings, which is a lot less zoomed in than Google, you see the stops (provided you have transport/transit selected). Next zoom level in shows the number of each bus (and you can still see a fairly wide area. Click on the stop in iOS (or right click if on a computer) and you can get the frequency of each route, whether there are diversions, and when the next several buses are due. Google offers this information (when clicked on) less clearly.

What I'd like to see from TFL for bus hopping is a map-based online route planner that would allow me put in a general departure point and destination (say Croydon and central London to use an earlier example) and for it to show all the routes that spread out from each that intersect - they wouldn't need to share a stop, just be within a user-specified walking distance.
Paper maps, online maps and now paper are tickets and ticket machines set to disappear from Tramlink https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/rail/cashless-trams/

dg writes: As reported on this blog in July
In case the numbering may be out of date on online maps, you can check where the actual buses are running live on train times.org - here for example the 25
https://traintimes.org.uk/map/london-buses/#25
There is an IOS app called Movit that suggests bus routes and has cut some journey times for me.
Fully agree. I just used a 1995 all London paper bus guide and found a bus route which answered my need, 268, then checked it still existed online which it did.
I also checked the two buses I used to get to school in the late 1950's early 1960's; one the 86 is still going strong.
I was born and grew up in London but have lived in Pennine Lancashire for 46 years.
Cheers, Roy










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