please empty your brain below

Bow flyover - grey numbers on a grey background, really helpful for the visually impaired.
Whatever the "process" is within tfl to update bus information, it's totally broken. I've made an official complaint about the lack of updates on the tfl website following recent route changes in the Isle of Dogs. (As with stop M, all the information on D3/135/277 is now out of date).. Fobbed off with ludicrous answer that it takes weeks to prepare new information, as if somehow these changes were a surprise to tfl.
BUSES

EAST LONDON

THIS WILL NEVER END
Nice big numbers on the flyover's legs. Shame that the direction signs are too wide and overlap.

Could have been done more neatly.
Let's campaign for every other bus to be a 25X which continues to go over the flyover.
What's a digital bus stop? Somewhere for digital buses to stop?
@Island Dweller

TfL's answer is ludicrous. If DG can cause a website to change automatically with new content every day at 07:00 (or at a subject-appropriate other time) it should not be beyond the wit of TfL to set up its website to switch over to the new routings on the stroke of whatever time the routings take effect.

As for information at stops, I can recall, nearly forty years ago (I've looked it up - end of October 1978), a man in a London Transport van changing the enamel "E plates" and paper timetables on routes 9 and 9a to reflect the change to 7-day-a-week working on the former and withdrawal of the Sundays-only latter. The change only affected the very eastern end of the route, but the plates were being changed to reflect it as far away as Kensington.
London Transport really did do attention to detail in those days.
25X is a great idea. Should only stop where I want to get on and again where I want to get off! Bugger everybody else.
At Crossharbour there's a new timetable panel on display for the 277 (which has replaced the withdrawn D3 and which is no longer on display) but the out of date D8 is still on display in the same bus stop case meaning the contractor has been there and done half the job but incongruously not the whole job; unless there are two different contractors involved.
Can anyone one tell me a quick way to complain to TfL about their services. Whenever I have tried to do it I have often been defeated by the round about way their complaints websites requires all sorts of information before you can even set out the point you want to make. Is their a direct way to email them to let them know my complaint as I could if I spoke to someone direct
Probably yet another FOI request to see how long after a route change before the website is updated.

Don't forget the TfL has (a) already done a consultation, (b) awarded a contract, or told the operator what to do - so the fact that whoever does the TfL website is unaware and unprepared for the change is a bit of a joke.

As I said before - the Countdown site (Countdown.tfl.gov.uk) was kept up to date - including the maps, but then it was scrapped and you get redirected to the tfl.gov.uk one.
There must be some fast or semi-fast services on longer-distance bus routes in London, skipping some of the intermediate stops. Croydon comes to mind - any others?
I suspect that, in addition to any possible incompetence, the reason TfL websites are not updated in a timely fashion may also be connected with staff cuts (or administrative savings, cutting unproductive back office staff, or whatever the latest euphemism is). And oddly enough, if passengers could be directly asked whether priority should be given to websites or to actually keeping the buses running (with the answer "both" disallowed), they might well prefer the actual service.

The other argument says that it will take the same amount of staff time to update the website, whether it is done at the correct moment or 12 weeks later. And time would then be saved on listening and "responding" to complaints.
Look how long it takes for Underground carriage maps to be changed.

Well into this year - in fact there may still be some on trains still out there - many District Line maps were still showing Cannon Street as shut on Sundays. It's been open since January 2015.

In my neck of the woods we still have spider bus maps up that have been inaccurate since summer 2014 - and yes I have complained to Tfl but clearly they and the contractors they emply to check the stops just can't be bothered. I assume Tfl don't have someone checking the contractors!
Sorry if this comment offends DG:

If the benefits of going over the flyover is large enough, especially in rush hours, maybe something like "X25" should be considered.

dg writes: The benefits of going over the flyover is not that large.
*Andrew yes there are express buses that miss out many stops.

The X26 West Croydon-Kingston-Heathrow is the obvious example.

I understand it is flexible enough to be able to dynamically change its stop-to-stop route to avoid jams.

Perhaps a rethink to allow this on sections of route where the net gain to those not joining of getting off exceeds the cost of a change.

I expect there are lots of routing where a speed up for some is possible.

Thus I noted that when Petersham Road was closed and the 65's section from Kingston to Richmond was diverted to the other side of the river, this made it easily five minutes faster to get to Twickenham from Kingston.
@ Andrew

The only ones I can think of are the X68 - an express version of the 68 which runs non stop between Bloomsbury and West Norwood - and the X26 - a direct descendant of the 726 Green Line, which runs limited stop between Croydon and Teddington, and then non stop to Hatton Cross and Heathrow.
Asking for buses that serve the local population is far too left wing....
The 607 Shepherds Bush (White City) to Uxbridge is a limited stop service.
I think the A10 Uxbridge to Heathrow is too.
The X26 and X68 are incredibly slow despite skipping stops. Although if they stopped at every stop, the routes would take about 5 hours each direction (seriously). The buses are already always full.

Between Croydon and Kingston there are no alternative routes. On weekdays at peak hours if there is any sort of disruption on the roads, which happens more often than not, buses usually turn around at Hatton Cross (as they arrive 1 hour behind schedule), which is very annoying if you are waiting at Heathrow, but if you go to Hatton Cross then you won't get on with your luggage.
There is also the 96 and 428 between Dartford and Bluewater - apart from the call at the hospital.

The A10 simply serves a section of road/motorway without any stops, as opposed to being an express - bit like the 108 through the Blackwall Tunnel.

X25 - you can only have an express if it's easy to overtake other buses - this is why the 607 works. Given the levels of traffic, it'll be an express until it gets stuck behind a 25 and then be unable to pull out to overtake, anyway I always considered the Liverpool Street - Gidea Park service a X25 and a X86.
@John

True there is no direct route between Croydon and Kingston other than the X26, but over that distance most people would use the train via Clapham Junction or possibly train (or bus) and tram via Wimbledon.

The X26 has a parallel "stopping service" between Croydon and Sutton provided by the 407. (Not the original 407, which ran between Slough and Langley). Between Sutton and Kingston, the 213 performs a similar function, and between Kingston and Heathrow the 285 does the same thing.
I note that one of the comments published in TfL's summary of the 25 consultation was indeed, "Introduce an express service mirroring the 25 route" - a suggestion endorsed by no fewer than 4 respondents.
Really pleased my plea of 48 hours ago to return to bus info rather than political stuff has been followed up! DG, do any buses now go over the Bow flyover, given the view is so good it might be worth a visit?
Long live bus stop m
There will be no X25 created by TfL. I doubt the 25 will exist in its current form by 2018/19. It's already on a shortened contract and is likely to be chopped into bits as TfL try to force people on to Crossrail to pay higher fares and help pay off the loans to build Crossrail. Expect to see several sets of consultations issued by TfL over the coming months to deal with a plethora of issues including Crossrail, rationalising central London's network, Oxford St pedestrianisation, access to health care facilities and a general desire to reduce the cost of the bus network. Fares freezes don't come without a cost!
@ Island Dweller - assuming you got that "it takes weeks" comment in an official communication from TfL then I would send it straight back to someone very senior in TfL or City Hall and ask them what the heck is going on. That response may be too honest for its own good but it's also ludicrous. It took nearly a month for the changes to the 83 / 483 to be reflected on the TfL website. I note from social media exchanges, over the lack of updates to Lewisham's "real time bus departure" info to reflect the new stop locations, that the poor chaps at TfLBusAlerts are not getting an adequate response from "TfL Digital" which I assume is the whizzo new name for what was "IM". Of course the old name meant "Information Management" and now we seemingly have no sensible management of (public) information going on.

There are now multiple failings on all sorts of things. We've done the website issues before. With spider maps we have a strange situation where in some places the paper maps at stops do get replaced but they don't appear online. You also get the reverse with a digital version existing but no paper versions. We've been lucky enough to get some extra weekend night routes locally and while the stop flags are pretty much up to date as is the regular spider map the special night bus network map (for NE London) is 2 years out of date! So you have two maps side by side which contradict each other. Err?!

The new form of Finance Report for the TfL Board shows that a load of IT projects have been ditched and hundreds of staff, mostly contractors, have gone which may explain the chronic problems with any form of web updating. I also thought the regular posts on the TfL digital blog about service and stop updates in the Journey Planner had stopped but, to my surprise, we have an update for 7 October - the first in about 5 weeks. That will at least help app developers understand they may need to update their apps to reflect stop and service changes. Now if only TfL could apply those same changes to its own website?










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