please empty your brain below
One gets experienced about knowing exactly when to press the bell, depending on the driver's speed and parked cars in the area to ensure one is dropped off at the right place. There are clearly known regulars as people are literally dropped outside their front gate.
A characteristic of these are that they can be hailed more or less anywhere but after a short while after introduction recognised pickup points proliferate - generally by road junctions.
The service has got much better recently with the driver getting an audio signal when running early. This means they generally arrive spot on time and one can time leaving the house almost to the minute so that one only waits a very short while.
It's also good to hear from Pedantic about the anti-running-early gadget. Why couldn't futurologists of the past predict wonderful things like this, rather than always telling us that we would have electric curtains?
I use one one of the buses on a Hail and Ride section regularly. With few exceptions (usually due to traffic conditions) the buses arrive on time and stop and pick up where I want. Usually a "can you stop near xxx" to the driver as my destination approaches will mean that I end up at the most convenient place for me.
I also like the idea of not having to wait at a specific spot. There are occasions where I think that I may have missed the bus and so decide to walk towards where the regular buses run and, depending on my destination, I may be able to get an alternative bus. Meanwhile, if the bus comes along, I can just stick my hand out.
My experience is that the drivers are generally more friendlier, although that may just be an illusion perhaps due to more contact with the driver than on normal routes.
It has coloured my opinion of hail and ride ever since!
The north/south section would be fine if it weren't actually a fairly major, busy road. Though I suppose it's beside the point because I've never in 3.5 years actually seen an S4 stop along there.
Some tube stations stock them, as do certain council offices (Hackney Council stock NE London, most North London stations will have a North West and a North East buried somewhere in a box).
Looking at a website for a paper map is probably why not find any mention of them. If want paper most likely best to *write a letter* thereby giving the impression that you one of those people not yet on the "interweb" thing.
London bus map + "Red Bus Rover" ticket = happy days. Think for many a London child their first experience of "independant travel" would most likely be in the form of a red London bus...not sure if that still the case, be interesting to see if any stats on the subject.
@ greatkingrat
Thanks. That at least one then...
Because they only have one door, you go past the driver as you get out - and an appropriate 'thank you' is (I'm sure) always welcome!
I once got a long, aggrieved lecture from a 184 driver for standing in the wrong place in a hail and ride section (after I'd made him pick me up by signalling from pretty much the middle of the road), but he couldn't explain how I, a non-local, non-regular user, was supposed to work out where the right place was. Telepathy?
@Dokina My personal experience is that drivers will generally stop anywhere to pick passengers up, but may have their favoured points for stopping if somebody just rings the bell. Asking the driver if they'll stop at a specific point will usually work.
I suppose from a driver's point of view, they'd prefer to stop at the nearest place where they can pull in to the pavement rather than just stop level with parked cars (I don't know if there's any legal requirement for this). If catching a bus, I'll try to go to a point where there's no cars either side of the road if possible so that there is sufficient room for the driver to pull into the pavement and other traffic can pass easily.
I was in Carshalton the other day and decided to get the S3 (Maldon Manor destination). West Street is very narrow at the south end and, although a H&R section I wasn't sure if the bus would actually stop anywhere there. In the end, as no bus was in sight, I walked to the junction with Colston Ave where there were other people waiting and caught it there.
Travelling on buses that run over H&R routes (as DG did a while ago) usually means that you get to see parts of an area you would never pass through normally, even though the route usually goes 'round the houses"!
Pedantry point - the elegant maps you (and I) liked so much were drawn by B G Lewis (not 'G F'). They were beautiful and collectable - I always tried to get two - one to use and one to keep...
By today's standards they'd be 'unreadable' - the lettering was tiny and they tried to semi-scale in the entire network. The earliest B G Lewis maps DID show the whole red bus network, including St Albans and Slough, but that condensed the central area to genuine near-unreadability, so from the late 40s the map was scaled up and the outermost bits went beyond the frame.
The LT Museum is shortly launching a theme of 'London by Design' but its so far been an unsuccessful battle to get them to include bus maps. If DG and readers could help, by non-formatted moans to the Museum, we might see a more comprehensive 'design' for London - besides, buses carry more passengers now than the tube.
To echo previous comments the local route I use has a long H&R section and the drivers clearly have favoured stopping points. If you weren't local you'd have no idea that a bus ran down the roads or where to wait. I do agree with the observation that H&R routes tend to have a better driver / passenger rapport. I was once "told off" by a driver on the 384 for waiting in the "wrong place" at New Barnet station. I was standing opposite a stop for the other direction so I assumed I was in broadly the right place. Oh dear I wasn't! The bus did stop but I was told in no uncertain terms "the proper stop is down the hill, round the corner and past the bridge" - i.e. nearly 6 mins walk away. How was I supposed to know that? This was before we had the wonders of I-Bus.
It's interesting that you included a snippet of the Sutton section there DG - a friend and I were debating whether or not that short section of the S3 on Carshalton Road/Pound Street is Hail & Ride - there are no bus stops for any route along there and it is inbetween two H&R sections (Banstead Road South and West Street). He argued it was - and successfully hailed a S3 on Pound Street - but I wasn't so sure. I think there can be a gap between a Hail & Ride section and a fixed bus stop. Seems to be a grey area (no pun intended) if a H&R can apply to one route, if it doesn't to others running along the same road. Any ideas about this unique(?) situation?
I pontificated briefly over the A316 Chertsey Road between the Lincoln Estate and St Margarets station being Hail & Ride for route 969 - one of the longest, if not the longest distance between stops on a non-express section. It appears not.
I agree it's a good development for the maps, though there may well be some discrepancies between the iBus stop lists and displayed H&R sections.
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