Comments on: Peak capacity to be reduced on the 507

By: jameshigham

jameshigham — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:40:12 +0000

Forgive this OT promotion but please support Man in a Shed’s “Silly Week” next week. Logos are available at his site.
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By: jameshigham

jameshigham — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:04:28 +0000

The 15 sounds nice. Next time I’m in London.
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By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:02:16 +0000

I’d say that buses affect all Londoners; the better the public transport provision, the less private cars on the road.

The Routemasters have all gone except for heritage routes 9 (Albert Hall to Aldwych) and 15 (Trafalgar Square to Tower Hill).

xD.
Dave Cole´s last blog ..Peak capacity to be reduced on the 507

By: jameshigham

jameshigham — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:31:16 +0000

As a bicycle rider, bendy buses are of academic interest. Have they replaced the Routemasters yet?
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By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:42:50 +0000

Not sure I’ll be able to – I’m moving house on the Friday! I may pop my head into the area on the Monday, though, to see what’s happening.

Is statistical multiplexing (in layperson’s terms) the same as having twice as many columns with half the width taking up more space?

xD.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:30:10 +0000

Enviro200s on our local route, plus some new and very nice Optare Versas but they’re configured about half-and-half seating and standing and have a total capacity in the low 50s. The 12m Citaros for the 507 will be substantially larger and presumably (although we haven’t seen any interior pics) have the same ratio of seats-to-standing (1/3 – 2/3) as bendies. In other words they’ll be identical inside. AFAIK only the RV1 uses Citaros in town, non-bendy ones are quite rare in London.

I do expect difficulties in the early days particularly if a large crowd off a single train coincide with the start of the 3 minute window – some of them may well be left behind where the bendy could have taken them, and therefore have at least a six minute wait. There’s something in telecoms called ’statistical multiplexing’ that may apply here and means that you don’t get the same quality of service by halving the bandwidth of each pipe and doubling the number of pipes. This particularly affects latency.

By the way, since I’ll not be able to come down, do take notes, pictures etc. of the first day, particularly if they haven’t managed to run it entirely bendy-free…
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By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:38:48 +0000

I bow to your superior knowledge – although the 507 is pretty bloody crush loaded in the mornings!

I didn’t realise they were going to use Citaros – don’t they use Darts for other single deck, non-artic routes? Even if the figures are 120 and 70, they represent a reduction in capacity.

Thanks for the corrections.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:33:25 +0000

TfL don’t use 149 as the estimated capacity for bendies, they use 120, which makes the replacements about the same capacity. The 149 is absolute crush-loading, which was later found not to be a great basis for estimating capacity. They went down to 100 for a bit, actually, before settling on 120.

The replacements are, er, Mercedes Citaros, the 12m non-bendy model, so they’ll be indistinguishable in ambience (that’s what the picture in the leaflet is) and IIRC the capacity figure is 70.

BTW, There’s a typo in your article, the real date is 25th July. There’s as yet no indication anywhere of how many of the new buses will be available for service as they hadn’t arrived in the capital yet.
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