Comparing Sydney and London

[tonyp]

London buses are able to empty quicker than Sydney buses by having a fixed fare for all bus journeys in the same way as Melbourne's trams, eliminating the need for passengers tap off. There is also a code where all passengers enter via the front door and exit via the rear which improves the flow.

Comparing like with like, the no tap-off is widespread across Europe because the cities are far more compact and are often covered by one principal fare zone. There is no way in the world a London double decker empties quicker than a typical European multi-door single decker - not only because it's double deck but precisely because TfL practises passenger flow, which means the bus can't use all available doors to empty.

I don't doubt that a London decker empties faster than a Sydney decker because the Sydney fare system requires tap-off, which causes a momentary pause by each passenger at the doors. I think it would be 50/50 whether a London decker would empty the same number quicker than a Sydney two-door single decker and certainly not quicker than a three-door artic in spite of the Sydney tap-off handicap. Confirmation of all of this requires some enthusiastic person visiting London and Sydney to do some stop-watch work!

With a decker, there is also an issue with whether everybody getting off is already on the lower deck or not and whether some of those in seats on the upper deck choose not to rise from their seats before the bus stops. In my 60-odd years of experience of them, I've always found that it's difficult to rise and move off the top deck of a decker while the bus moving, and impossible down the stairs except at some personal risk.

[tonyp]

I've taken the opportunity to study a few reports comparing single deck/artic buses and double deckers and it seems that other jurisdictions overseas take the trouble to professionally examine the issues, rather than going by preconceived opinions which seems to be the case here. In fact over the years I haven't seen much local study at all of the operational design aspects of street public transport vehicles since the 1930s when the last significant academic standard papers appeared. The attitude with buses seems to be: we've done it this way for years and it works OK so what's the problem? If it wasn't for the DDA I'm sure we'd still be riding high-floor buses. As it is, the acknowledgment to accessibility requirements is absolutely minimalist.

Three cases where I found detailed studies were in London, San Francisco (both trialling artics vs deckers) and India as a whole. The Indian one was interesting because it summarised studies of dwell times relative to doors and steps, noting particularly the significant savings in dwell time from a good arrangement and thus being able to have a quicker journey, more frequent buses and/or reduced fleet size. I know from my tram work that it's considered best practice to have passengers passing through a door, in or out, in less than one second. The Indian report noted that prepayment on its own brought the time down from multiple seconds to 2.5 seconds per passenger through a single door, level access at doors on top of this down to 2 seconds, three wide (double-leaf) doors in the bus on top of this down to 0.6 seconds and four wide doors in an artic down to 0.3 seconds per passenger. Double decks weren't studied as they didn't seem to be of interest there.

In London and San Francisco, the dwell times of artics were found to be much faster than those of deckers, with artics' dwell time not worsening significantly the more passengers were being exchanged, in contrast to the deckers where the more people there were, the worse the dwell time got. In San Francisco this was shown on a graph with the artics' plot showing a shallow rise and the decker's rising steeply the more passengers there were. The composite dwell time on the decker was found to be some 25-30% greater than on the artic. Queuing on the stairs was mentioned as an issue in the deckers. Also, in the comparison, the artic used was an older model with steps at the doors compared to the decker being a new model with a low-floor lower deck, so the artic was at a slight disadvantage in the comparison. San Francisco doesn't seem to have seriously gone for double deckers since this study.

[boronia]

In Singapore a few years ago, I noticed that the card readers came on about 100m before the stop, and most passengers were able to tap off before the bus pulled up. So unloading was very quick. I can't remember if it was rear only exit.

[tonyp]

In Singapore a few years ago, I noticed that the card readers came on about 100m before the stop, and most passengers were able to tap off before the bus pulled up. So unloading was very quick. I can't remember if it was rear only exit.

That's quite common in Europe, no doubt where Singapore got the idea from. It's also done with the door-open buttons. So basically by the time the vehicle has come to a stop, you are already tapped off and the doors open straight away without delay. Do any bus or tram operations in Australia set everything up like this?

The other thing you find in Europe is the card-readers positioned on the other side of the aisle from the door or angled away from the door in order to draw people away from blocking the entrance while they tap on or off. All these features result from field research and studies done over many years. Such attention to these efficiency details used to be done for the trams in Sydney until the last ones were built, but I suspect for buses they couldn't care less as nobody thinks about the actual purpose for which buses are built. There are signs however that they are aware of dwell times as Gladys has mentioned it in the past as a reason for not getting double deckers, but she was always a good researcher before they got into government and probably knows more than a lot of the professionals running her agencies - who've since got the upper hand by "Yes Ministering" her.

[bussie]

In Singapore a few years ago, I noticed that the card readers came on about 100m before the stop, and most passengers were able to tap off before the bus pulled up. So unloading was very quick. I can't remember if it was rear only exit.

That's quite common in Europe, no doubt where Singapore got the idea from. It's also done with the door-open buttons. So basically by the time the vehicle has come to a stop, you are already tapped off and the doors open straight away without delay. Do any bus or tram operations in Australia set everything up like this?

Singapore has gotten the function to lock and unlock readers automatically since at least 14-15 years ago. In fact, one of the first cities in the world to use a GPS based fare and fleet management system.

[moa999]

Sydney Opal buses are similar, though it's more like 25m before, and there also seems to be a speed filter (won't turn on when a bus skips stops).

Though unlike other places the Sydney readers generally work well and if you have the card out and ready you don't need to skip stride when exiting.

[matthewg]

Singapore has gotten the function to lock and unlock readers automatically since at least 14-15 years ago. In fact, one of the first cities in the world to use a GPS based fare and fleet management system.

Turning the readers on before the stop wasn't a passenger flow thing, it was revenue. The readers used to always on with the fare stages incrementing when required.
Then it was observed that a significant number of people were tapping off as the bus left the previous stop, not as they approached their stop as intended. By tapping early, they got charged the fare for the previous stop instead of their intended one.

So they changed the logic to disable the readers as soon as the bus departed and re-enable them as the bus approaches the next stop (and the next fare stage loaded) to prevent this tap early and get a cheaper ride trick.

[clapham omnibus]

I did live in London for a couple of years, so I've experienced first-hand how bad is the bus transport and heard from my dad how, after the war, so many people turned to driving after the trams finished. It's immediately obvious that the battered old underground does all the work, fortunately, as otherwise it would fall in a heap.

tonyp - the whole world turned to cars after WWII, not just London. Your patronage profile of the underground is unreliable, check out TfL's annual report. Of the 3.6bn journeys undertaken on the tube and bus network last year, the bus network carried 62%.

[Stonesourscotty]

You can't compare the two Sydney has pathetic sized buses excluding a few Decker's and the bendies London only has a few small buses and there all outside the city centre except a few routes around Victoria. London has lots of terrible new build trains sadly like the 700/387 etc that are a vast downgrade on the previous stock whereas Sydney is getting a marginal improvement with the waratahs over S sets. Only comparison is they've both got a terrible tram line that doesn't have the frequency it needs to serve its customers.

[tonyp]

The New Routemaster only has a capacity of 80 plus a wheelchair or 87 without a wheelchair, the same capacity as a 12 metre single decker bus. The problem in Sydney is that they've down-rated the capacity of their standard rigid buses to satisfy the RTBU, plus the restrictive policy on door use that limits practical functionality of the bus and thus constrains how many people you can realistically get on board.

Interesting that you say the Croydon trams don't provide adequate service. Do you mean they don't provide the capacity to satisfy the demand? I've never ridden that system.

[Mr OC Benz]

The New Routemaster only has a capacity of 80 plus a wheelchair or 87 without a wheelchair, the same capacity as a 12 metre single decker bus. The problem in Sydney is that they've down-rated the capacity of their standard rigid buses to satisfy the RTBU, plus the restrictive policy on door use that limits practical functionality of the bus and thus constrains how many people you can realistically get on board.

Just a point of interest, the latest STA Volvo B8 Volgren deliveries are licenced to carry 77 passengers. 42 seated plus 35 standing. I imagine some of this is attributed to the fact that the chassis is lighter (than say a B12) and that the Volgren aluminium body also helps. It would be interesting to compare this with the few Volvo B8 Custom buses that have been delivered.

[tonyp]

Just a point of interest, the latest STA Volvo B8 Volgren deliveries are licenced to carry 77 passengers. 42 seated plus 35 standing. I imagine some of this is attributed to the fact that the chassis is lighter (than say a B12) and that the Volgren aluminium body also helps. It would be interesting to compare this with the few Volvo B8 Custom buses that have been delivered.

As axle load would be a major factor in determining carrying capacity, this doesn't make sense as a lighter axle load (if this is the case) should be favourable to carrying capacity, which is based also on internal space that would be similar to any other bus. I imagine these Sydney Volvo Volgrens would be almost identical to the Perth ones in internal space and in Perth they're rated at 82 passengers. In continental Europe a typical identical 12 metre bus is rated at up to 100 passengers but with only two doors in Australia this is not practicable in normal service.

[Linto63]

London has lots of terrible new build trains sadly like the 700/387 etc that are a vast downgrade on the previous stock whereas Sydney is getting a marginal improvement with the waratahs over S sets.

The new trains themselves are an improvement onwhat they are replacing, it's the ironing board seats that are the problem.

[BroadGauge]

whereas Sydney is getting a marginal improvement with the waratahs over S sets.

Why would you say only a "marginal" improvement? The difference from a passenger's point of view is chalk and cheese.

[Stonesourscotty]

I havn't been to London in over two years but i'm a regular on railforums among other sites and the low amount of good things said about the new trains is a worry i think the last great train that i rode was the class 350-1/3/4

The New Routemaster isn't a good example as its a 3 door and dual staircase model compare it to the market leader the enviro 400 which seats 90 and can also carry standee and its no competition hopefully one day tri axle deckers can run in London/Manchester etc.

I don't think the Croydon trams run frequently enough to match demand

Personally The Waratahs are bland cheap chinese stock, I try my hardest to use the Tangara services on the western over them

[tonyp]

the market leader the enviro 400 which seats 90 and can also carry standee and its no competition hopefully one day tri axle deckers can run in London/Manchester etc.

I can't find any information on the total capacity of this bus but it would certainly be less than an artic and nowhere near as effective because it's double deck. It's a long-distance bus rather than a citybus.

Pretty brochure but information-free:

https://www.alexander-dennis.com/media/ ... ochure.pdf

[Linto63]

I havn't been to London in over two years but i'm a regular on railforums among other sites and the low amount of good things said about the new trains is a worry i think the last great train that i rode was the class 350-1/3/4

New trains in the UK have generally been an improvement on what they have replaced, rising demand has resulted in more seats being wedged in reducing comfort levels / less seats being fitted with more having to stand.

The New Routemaster isn't a good example as its a 3 door and dual staircase model compare it to the market leader the enviro 400 which seats 90 and can also carry standee and its no competition hopefully one day tri axle deckers can run in London/Manchester etc.

London currently has a tri-axle decker on trial while Manchester operated a sizeable fleet 10-15 years ago. https://cbwmagazine.com/london-to-try-a ... le-decker/ Most of the thousands of tri-axle buses in Hong Kong and Singapore were bodied in the UK, yet they have never really caught on in the home market.

I can't find any information on the total capacity of this bus but it would certainly be less than an artic and nowhere near as effective because it's double deck.

Enviro400 seats 74-86 in single deck form.https://www.busandcoachbuyer.com/operators-bus/ Don't think anybody doubts a bendy carries more passengers, buts its lower percentage of seats was one of the prime beefs Londoners had with them, hence why they were replaced.

[Frosty]

In London & UK generally buses only have one wheelchair bay versus Sydney which has 2. This is quite problematic in the case of who gets the bay strollers vs wheelchairs even going has far the UK Supreme Court.

In the UK there seems to be a glut of new rolling stock with brand new trains Class 707 being replaced due to cheaper financing. I also read class 350/2 are being replaced with new trains. Obviously this doesn’t happen in Australia due to every state/city having different rolling stock requirements.

[tonyp]

Don't think anybody doubts a bendy carries more passengers, buts its lower percentage of seats was one of the prime beefs Londoners had with them, hence why they were replaced.

Yet I don't recall any particularly long bus rides in London. If you want to go a longer distance you usually get a train. The inefficiency of deckers in processing crowds is the counter side of that question. In Britain generally they seem to favour seats over efficiency. Sydney managed to achieve both in its crossbench trams but they had a safety downside that was fatal for staff.

[Stonesourscotty]

Tonyp the Enviro 400 is a Citybus the Scania Powered Enviro400 is normally a go anywhere bus especially with Stagecoach

https://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_17com/42259873582 here's a photo of an Enviro 400 the last one i rode in Manchester prior to coming over for State of Origin this bus now wears Manchester Bee Livery in commemoration of the 22 who where killed at the Manchester Arena this is a "Citybus" as you would call it style route in Manchester Between Picc Gardens and Sale working for First Manchester out of the former Finglands Depot.

[tonyp]

I think this illustrates the current state of play between two obviously competing schools of thought in London:

http://www.cityam.com/270418/bendy-buse ... ittee-says

One thing about UK is that it's right next to continental Europe where they can see at first hand large, extremely efficient single-deck operations with more capacity and productivity.

[Linto63]

Yet I don't recall any particularly long bus rides in London. If you want to go a longer distance you usually get a train.

All of the 5 busiest routes (25, 18, 29, 149 & 207) https://www.transportxtra.com/publicati ... bus-route/ have peak journey times of 70-130 minutes, which most wouldn't classify as short. http://www.londonbusroutes.net/details.htm

While the transport planner textbook theory is that everybody will alight once a bus route reaches a railway station to continue their journey, reality is that some prefer to avoid changing, even if it means a longer journey. Happened in Sydney when the Eastern Suburbs Railway opened. It was envisaged that buses would feed into the stations and passengers would continue their journeys by rail, hence the big interchange at Edgecliffe was built. But as it turned out passengers were less willing to change and hence through buses were retained.

London also has a fare structure where buses are much cheaper than rail, for the equivalent of a Chatswood / Strathfield / Hurstville to city commute, the single fare is £1.50 vs £3.30, a weekly £21 vs £49.

I think this illustrates the current state of play between two obviously competing schools of thought in London http://www.cityam.com/270418/bendy-buse ... ittee-says

The civil servants can come up with as many recommendations as they like, the political reality is that the voters don't want them. Boris Johnson was able to make the removal of bendys a signature policy in his campaign for mayor. While the resulting New Routemaster was a bit of a vanity project and not without its problems, if a mayor reintroduced bendys, it would be a gift for his opposite number, so not likely to happen in the foreseeable future.

[tonyp]

Yes, far be it for me to question too deeply the eccentricities of the British - they have to live with it themselves. It only concerns me when UK models are promoted overseas as the way transport should be done. It's more acute for me because I've lived through the post-war period when the British model became rampant through the bus industry in particular and has also infiltrated the railways. Before that we had a very robust and talented home-grown expertise which mainly looked at American (advanced in those days) and continental European models.

The history of this in the railways is well known - the initial British dominance of ideas was already swept aside by the end of the 19th century. The tramways almost never looked at the UK (ironically, partly because of the UK's preference for double-deckers which were pretty operationally hopeless). It seems to me that there was a lot of American influence in the early bus industry up to the 1960s, but at least there was an eclectic approach. The British influence of course hasn't ended with the change to bus chassis sourced on the European continent. The practices pretty-much continue in spite of the change of hardware. All they do is buy the chassis models that are most like the British.

When I looked into the background of PTA WA/Transperth to get some clues as to why they do things so well over there, I found that there is only one imported pom in their entire upper management structure! Almost all of them are native Western Australians. We have so much public transport talent and good ideas right here in Australia, always have - why the hell do we think we have to import expertise, and, if we do, why do we have to import it from the jurisdication with the least to offer in advanced thinking?

[Linto63]

When I looked into the background of PTA WA/Transperth to get some clues as to why they do things so well over there, I found that there is only one imported pom in their entire upper management structure!

Yet WA was the last to continue with the procurement of trains and buses from the mother country. Its 1950s railcars were imported from the UK at a time when everybody else was purchasing locally built railcars with US mechanicals. Its last Leylands entered service in 1985, nearly a decade after the other government operators had placed the last of theirs in service.

[Stonesourscotty]

Rode the B1 today and for the first time I ventured upstairs and past spit junction what an absolute crock of s**t that route is being run as no wonder so many of you don't like Decker's. The top deck is too low to stand on there are draconian almost middle eastern style don't stand audio and visual announcements whilst the bus is in motion and each stop is 2 minutes long when a proper decker style route should be 20 seconds or less except terminus when more older people alight. I can't believe the sta are running it so poorly when is the route getting privatised as its being run as a joke currently I think it can be run so much better by us Europeans.