please empty your brain below
Does TfL publish usage statistics for each bus route? They must know that there are long stretches where DG is the only passenger.

Andrew | 11.03.14 - 7:58 a.m. | #

26 of your of 71 blog posts this year have been about buses. It's time to change the background colour from grey to red, and just go with it full time... :-)

geofftech | Homepage | 11.03.14 - 8:15 a.m. | #

Hey, it is The Year Of The Bus, remember. I'm sure TfL's celebrations will kick up a gear soon.

If nothing else, all these posts about buses have helped haemorrhage 10% of my readership.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 11.03.14 - 8:22 a.m. | #

I like reading of the bus journeys that dg makes and then comparing his write up of a route with that of the "Ladies who bus". For my bus rides today it is just the H25,H32 or 482, maybe a 111. Nowhere near as pleasant rides as the 347 appears to be.

John | 11.03.14 - 8:53 a.m. | #

We're moving again.

A bit of a cliffhanger here. The "370 has just rolled in from the west" as you arrive at North Ockenden. The 347 and 370 both follow the same road to South Ockenden. So which got there first? And if the 347 came in second, how long did you have to wait for the next 370?

You have no doubt noticed the coincidence that the original but now renumbered LCBS route 347 was the subject of two of your earlier posts in this series.

You've now clocked up 150 miles, at an average speed just shy of 13 mph, and between North and South Ockenden you have crossed the GLA boundary for the 22nd and presumably last time.

Odd that the "live London bus map" only shows the section you didn't do, from Romford to Gallows Corner.

timbo | 11.03.14 - 10:01 a.m. | #

It should be "The year of the London bus", sadly. I live rurally nearish Winchester, in a town of 4,000, people and yer our buses are crap by comparison. Last bus home from any of the only 4 places we can get to is around 7pm... No eating out in the evening for us.

John Maltby | 11.03.14 - 10:15 a.m. | #

@Andrew, TfL doesn't know where you get off the bus, so they wouldn't know if DG was the only passenger.

DG is not the only geezer who does this sort of thing, you know... but he's one of the few that blogs about it

John2 | 11.03.14 - 10:25 a.m. | #

Well you haven't lost me - I find these posts fascinating - keep the good work going.

Dave B | 11.03.14 - 10:51 a.m. | #

I you going to continue on non-TfL buses down to Tilbury Riverside to use the passenger ferry across to Gravesend? I think you ought to, just to be the genuine completionist.

Paul S | 11.03.14 - 12:36 p.m. | #

@Paul S
That would be a long way from the GLA border, though it could be done with four more buses and a ferry (11/370, 73, 99, fy and finally the original 499)
https://www.thurrock.gov.uk/sites/default/files/assets/documents/thurrock_publictransport_map_201308.pdf
http://www.arrivabus.co.uk/serviceInformation.aspx?id=12442

But there is a quicker way, more faithful to the border.

timbo | 11.03.14 - 1:16 p.m. | #

@ paul
DG says "South Ockenden Green, to await my penultimate bus". Unless there is a direct bus from South Ockenden to the Tilbury ferry, I don't think he can be going that way

| 11.03.14 - 2:30 p.m. | #

What's the confusion... 370 then X80 right?

John2 | 11.03.14 - 9:09 p.m. | #

@john2
DG has surprised us before .........

timbo | 11.03.14 - 9:37 p.m. | #

TfL doesn't know where ever passenger gets off, no, but they must do usage surveys or modelling or something, otherwise how would they know where to run the buses to, or what frequency to run them and with what size of bus?

Andrew | 11.03.14 - 9:50 p.m. | #

@ Andrew - TfL did recently publish bus patronage numbers. The 347 had 42,494 pax in 2012/13. It's annual usage has been around the 42K mark for the last 5 years. Despite the low frequency it was not the least used regular TfL bus service. There are others that are less well patronised like the 385, H3, W10 and R5/R10.

TfL could, if they were bothered, work out where DG got on and got off as the stop location on boarding is recorded as part of the Oyster card transaction. Given DG is using a series of buses TfL could make a reasonable stab at the alighting stop based on the location of the subsequent boarding stop. This assumes, of course, that anyone is bothered and no one will be for an individual passenger. There is no certainty about alighting time or location - it'd be a guess.

For planning purposes TfL have said they look at aggregated flows / corridors of usage. Oyster data is just one aspect of the data, they also do route surveys to populate what I think is called BODS (Bus Origin Destination Survey). However I may be out of date when it comes to the data collection / survey process.

PC | 12.03.14 - 9:53 a.m. | #

@ PC, it used to be called RODS; Route Origin and Destination Survey, and it covered all TfL transport modes. for several years I worked on this, supervising interviewers on stations, and sending questionnaires by post to season ticket holders. this was pre-Oyster, and as pointed out above such data is now available easily, though individual passengers wouldn't be tracked.

amber | 12.03.14 - 10:22 a.m. | #

Do we know why TfL runs such an infrequent service?

| 12.03.14 - 11:07 a.m. | #

@ Amber - thanks.

@ Anon 1107 - TfL has a planning objective to provide access to the bus network within 400 metres of where people live.

Quote - "In residential areas, it is desirable for the bus network to run within about five minutes walk of homes, if this is cost-effective and if roads are suitable. This is about 400 metres at the average walking speed."

Frequency will be related to expected demand and clearly, from DG's post, the 347 serves a fair bit of open countryside. I suspect the 347 would do better if it was hourly and ran on to Lakeside - people from Harold Wood and Cranham might well give it a spin. However there's no money for such fripperies.

PC | 12.03.14 - 12:49 p.m. | #

@PC - thanks. That is exactly the sort of thing I was asking about. Cheers.

Presuambly they also know roughly how many passengers board at each stop (based on Oyster). I wonder if Franks Cottages, East View Kennels, Clay Tye Farm, etc, see that many passengers at any time...

Andrew | 12.03.14 - 2:22 p.m. | #

@ Andrew - from what I been told the bus ticket machines (ETM) automatically change location code as the bus moves along the route. The ETM is linked to I-Bus which knows the bus's location. There are no longer such things as fare stages and no need for drivers to manually adjust the ETM to change the stage number.

Therefore every transaction (cash, Oyster, Freedom Pass, bank card) can be linked to a stop location code. The only thing that might not be are paper travelcards and concessionary passes from elsewhere in England where there is the reliance on the driver pressing the pass button. When the readers are upgraded then the ITSO spec English concessionary passes will be machine read too. Therefore there is a strong likelihood that TfL will know the numbers boarding at every stop on every route.

PC | 12.03.14 - 2:51 p.m. | #

It may be possible to estimate ridership on different sectoins by combining the results for both directions. (If on average ten people a day get on at East View Kennels northbound, as a first guess it is likely that the same number alight there southbound). It won't tell you where those individuals got on, but it will give an estimate of the number on board the bus at any particular stage. IT will only give a number per day - it won't tell you is what time of day people are getting off at a particular stop.

timbo | 12.03.14 - 5:36 p.m. | #











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