Copenhagen's Baffling Buses (2) ...

A, R and S : All Rightly Sorted!

A for ???

Routes with suffix letter 'A' are high frequency all-stops city services, usually running all night.

Above, the 9A ran to Glostrop station, the current terminus of the Letbane (tram) line. But there is no sign of it today c/o Google Maps. But the 8A has recently re-appeared in the island area which accommodates the airport.

Here is its timetable.

Note that the full route runs every 30 mins all night with daytime headway being given as a woolly 5-10 mins!

The 8A Legravsparken station terminus and map are optimistic in their geography.

The bus terminus layby is at the very bottom of the map and the pin for the Metro station is at the top, Streetview shows an 8A in residence ...

... with the Metro at the far end of the huge block of flats on the right.

Wikipedia does revel that the 'A' network has had numerous re-jigs over the years. The original idea was for "rapid transit" routes to supplement the developing Metro system but there isn't much that is notably rapid about the 'A' network today!

'S' routes are more 'rapid' as they are mostly 'limited stop'.

fbb has not found evidence of what the 'A' stands for. "Frequent" in Danish is "Hyppig" which, according to Google Translate, is pronounced 'Hoo-big'.

R is for Rural?

These lines do run is association with local trains ...

... which also carry an 'R' suffix.

But Google Translate tells fbb that rural is "landdistrikterne" in Danish!

The 430R runs every 30 minutes Monday to Friday and every hour on all other days. It does link three stations; Kalunburg, Hong and Slagelsee on the east of the Island of Zealand.

Kalundburg is an important ferry terminal for ships to mainland Denmark.

S is for Superbus?

That name does appear in a few places but does not have general currency. 'S' routes are limited stop running on top of the standard city network. Readers may remember the Wedgwood blue occasional dots for rhe 350S (now 250S) alongside the more frequent cyan dots for the 5C.

Why use blue for both? What would be wrong with green, or purple or pink?

The notable feature of the 'S' network is that one route used to be double deck, surely a rarity in Europe.

Now single decks are standard throughout.

Originally, branding was simply a white and blue chevron bank above the windows as here on an older single deck vehicle ...

A typical 'S' timetable looks like this.

Note the hourly all-night service and every 15 minutes for most of the day. Thui is the timetable for t0e 'S' line that features in the airport are map, although it does not serve the airport ...

... although a heavy rail connection is available,

The problem with Copenhagen's excellent public transport network is that there is too much information on-line with confusing operator names and logos. 

Once fbb had found the correct and safe route through the minefield, information was good. 

What is needed is one well labelled and well designed web site with all the other entry points being removed or incorporated. It would also be nice to have a simple overview of what the suffix letters really mean.

9 out of 10 for quality of service but only 5 out of 10 for on-line information and ease of use.

 Next Variety blog : Saturday 15th Nov 

Copenhagen's Baffling Buses (1) ...

 ... Baffle Much Less

666 (perhaps unfortunately 'The Mark of the Beast - Bible book of Revelation!) was a number used for a special pop concert event at a Copenhagen stadium whilst ...

... 50E was an experimental trolley bus route.

But first, an apology. fbb reported that the overview web site only offered a journey planner and no maps or timetables. That's because the old man clicked on ...

... which was a silly mistake. fbb should know better than to try a web site labelled "public transport" and expect to find all about public transport! Silly old man.

Now, if only the incompetent octogenarian had looked at ...

... as above, he would have found everything he could ever want! Din Offentlige Transport is the "DOT" brand on the front of the buses. It means "Your Public Transport". (see front of 666 bus above)

Anyway, DOT has full timetables, easy to find if you know the route number and only slightly less easy to find if you use the maps. 

There is the Copenhagen city map we have met before ...

... with the airport area shown above. For those with a good retentive memory, note is made that a red line for an 'A' service has re-appeared. One of yesterday's versions showed all the 'A' routes in the area had been withdrawn.

So here goes with a full and frank expose of the bus services in Copenhagen.

Airport Route 36

Timetables are in the horizontal format which is OK once you are use to it.

Saturday service has a similar frequency with Sunday and official holidays offering a bus every 30 min. There is no route map, but a table showing roads served (left) and stops served (right) is useful if you know exactly what you want.

These are the standard City routes.

Special Route 5C

The deep yellow "network" colour is modified by big splodge of cyan.

In this case there is a detailed route diagram on-line but NOT on any of the usual web sites. It is headed Nyt Bynet ...

... which means something like "New Arrangement". But it might help us explore the route from North (Hospital) via the city to the Airport in the South.

Oddly, the bus has a layby on the opposite side of a dual carriageway from the hospital ...

fbb suspects that this layby is a new construction ...

... the bus having been pushed out of stops on the main road to make way for ...

... the forthcoming Letbane tram extension! 

There is the bus stop, inconveniently over there.

There is no obvious subway!

The 5C continues on its Airport trajectory ...

... serving two stations (St), Norrebro being for Metro and S-bane trains ...

... and Norreport being similarly multi-tasking. The Metro bit is splendid!

Next the 5C takes a loop ...

... to get to the main nattily named city centre stop  ...

... Hovedbanegården, Tivoli (Bernstorffsgade) which is the stop for the Central Station. Google Earth obliges.

Tivoli is variously described as a Beer Garden or a Pleasure Park ...

... which will look great when illuminated ...

... and provide lots of fun for kiddies of all ages.

Meanwhile, the 5C continues its run south(ish) to the Airport.

The route passes Anagerbro station on the Metro ...

... where line M2 has yet to come up for air!

The terminus at the airport is at a long roadside bus stop ...

... in full view of the terminal building.

fbb thinks the C of 5C stands for Cityline ...

... although no other service is designated 'C'.

The timetable is, to say the least, impressive.

fbb notes that it suffers from London Buses type "woolly" frequencies.  What does "every 3 to 10 minutes" actually mean? "Every 11 to 14 minutes" to the airport is even dafter.

The service runs all night, every hour from the Hospital, every hour from the Airport but overlapping to give a bus every 30 minutes in the core. There are no through buses overnight from Hospital to Airport|!

Tomorrow fbb will explore 'A', 'R' and 'S' brands.

The excitement is palpable!

 Next Baffling Buses blog : Friday 14th Nov 

Copenhagen's Confusing Cartography

Readers may have been wondering whatever happened to fbb's overview of Copenhagen's bus services. And like they say in all good RomCom films (and in many, many bad ones!), It's Complicated! 

If you stick to Metro, S-Bane and even the national rail services, there is just one map to consider.

It is up to date as it shows the tram, only opened at the end of last month.

But it does not show buses!

There are maps which purport to show everything, but, at first glance they are diagrammatic and assume at least some knowledge of the structure of the city,

Surely, you might think, there would be a web site giving access to all modes which includes a full network map.

Unfortunately, there isn't. This page tells you the link is unavailable and, even if you go by another route, the best offer is a journey planner, and a hapless mapless journey planner - in Danish!!

So fbb tried another approach, by sneaking up on a map via a less obvious route. He explored  maps for travel to the airport.

Some were really useless. There was a fares zone map ...

... which only showed the Metro and only as unlabelled thick lines.

But one offering looked hopeful.

Here was airport, Metro Line M2, buses 2A and 4A in RED, buses 5C and 350S in BLUE and 'Re' in GREEN. T.he actual bus roads are ORANGE, the Metro PURPLE  and the 'Re' BLACK.

But fbb was confused. If there were 2A and 4A routes, where were 2 and 4? Ditto 5C and 350S - and did these two look like different shades of blue?

Yep - even the dots for stops are differently blue; cyan for 5C and a Wedgwood blue for 350S.

fbb was quite pleased with progress at this point, until he came across a slightly more geographical version of the same area.

So the airport chunk (actually an island) of this map was duly enlarged,

The Metro is now dotty, the two blues are now appropriately coloured bus roads and the other bus roads are orange as before.

It would appear that the 2A and 4A have gone and we have a completely different network of multiple orange-line routes numbered without any  letter suffix.

BUT, taking a screen shot of the neighbouring area to the west ...

... there are 'A' routes shown as red lines! We have a red 1A, 7A and 9A, all clearly labelled intertwining with Metro (dotted) and S-bane (solid) black lines.

On the above extract we also have an orange line for routes 991 and 992!

They run along a white scar across the whole map. Or, on another version, you could have a dark blue line.

It is over enlarged, but you get the idea!

The first problem that fbb was able to resolve was the oddity of the suffix  'A'  routes.

One rather unhelpful version of the 'A' network was this ...

... which showed nothing in the "airport" area (map above, lower right area) whereas another version of the same map ...

... showed red 'A' routes in that area. So clearly the network had been expanded. 

Hold fast; none of these maps was dated so maybe the 'A' network had been cut back?

Yesterday was, indeed, complicated. Mrs fbb had booked a haircut for her chubby hubby, possibly as a result of Divine prompting as this coming Saturday (15th Nov) is men's breakfast at church.

fbb had committed to making some soup for lunch out of the weekend's leftovers.

Then, in accepting the invitation to a good breakfast nosh, fbb asked if there were any minor task where assistance was needed.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK.

Yesterday evening, back came the reply, "Dear fbb**, our speaker cannot cone due to a very heavy cold, could you manage 25 to 30 minutes post nosh prognostication."

** fbb has summarised the e-mail with the explanation that the brekkie boss did use the old man's more conventional name and did not use exactly the words quoted above. 

To add to the fun, the laptop is unwell and this blog was concocted entirely on the tablet.

But, in amongst all the confusion, your frazzled blogger has managed to extract the truth from The Great Grimpen Mire of Mapping Mystery and will explain Copenhagen's bus network tomorrow.

But wait - it's complcateder!

430 R and 480 R?

R?

It makes the history of model tank wagons almost a relaxation.  But there are four more in 'Shell' yellow to examine.

None of them looks like the above!

 Next Copenhagen bus blog : Thurs 13th Nov