Going Loopy At Luton (Part 2)

Loopy Routes With Loopy Loops

Contrary to popular opinion, it is NOT "illegal" to reverse a bus with passengers on board. There are plenty of locations where this happens on a daily basis. 

Not far from fbb mansions is the village of Otterton. 

Here the Stagecoach 157 does a double run through the very attractive village and reverses on Ottery Street. Here there are clear warning signs ...

... and obvious road markings!

Whatever? Everybody knows that the 157 reverses here every hour Monday to Saturday and four times on a Sunday.

But, in general, reversing is less than ideal. The Traffic Commissioners don't like it (If they ever notice as they apply their rubber stamp to a registration!), the Police don't like it and bus operators don't like it - all on safety grounds.

So you either persuade someone to build a turning circle or you use a loop of roads.

Another reason for using a loop is that you, as an operator, perceive you will be serving more cash customers for the same amount of time and fuel - often a misplaced optimism. Confusion can lose passengers!

And so to Lutin Airport.

Arriva Route 100

This is part of a 15 minute frequency (Monday to Friday) between Stevenage and Luton.

The 101 just serves Luton Interchange whilst the 100 serves the other Luton Interchange (!) before trundling on to the airport. A naive blog reader might suppose that it runs direct like the A and the F70/F77.

Aha, that would be too easy. It loops, but not for reasons of safety or ease of turning the bus around.

It runs OUT via Wigmore and returns direct before hurtling off back to Stevenage.

Wigmore? Why?

The answer is A Simple Diversion Aimed at shoppers.

So if you were inspired to travel from Stopsley Inspire to ASDA, you would have to trek via Luton Interchange! 

Convenient, eh? 

But having shopped, you may wonder how to get home.

Don't expect Arriva to tell you!

There are no route 100 buses from ASDA to anywhere! ASDA does not exist.

 

Good, innit?

Arriva could, if it were a VERY clever company, put an ASDA time on the top of the TO Hitchin table at xx57 amd xx27. But that would be helpful!

Thinks! Might it not make more sense to have the 100 hang a left at Stopsley Green ...

... and tun via ASDA and the airport on the way into Luton. It surely wouldn't add much to the through running time compared with grinding along the Hitchin Road! and it would make the timetable simple. 

But that might be a bit brave and risky for Arriva!

Then, if you were aiming to use service 100 on a Saturday ...

... the combined service has been reduced to every 20 min with buses to ASDA and the airport every 40 minutes. This follows the well known rule that, if you want to reduce your passenger numbers even further (to the square root of nothing)** then run a bus every 40 minutes.

You might carty more passengers if you made it hourly!

But fbb does have a really loopy loop for his excited readership! And loopy in several different ways.

Stagecoach MK1

This is already loopy in concept as it is a concatenation of buses from Bedford to Luton and Buses from Milton Keynes to Luton, the together-route being a huge "V" shape.

Actually it is not a straightforward one-way loop at Luton, It is just that the route follows an unconventional "hook" via the airport but in both directions.

Let us approach from Bedford.

In we come to the Luton Interchange ...

... which is huge! The MK1 then ought to run direct to the airport, but it doesn't. It, too, runs via Wigmore ASDA. Having arrived at the airport and deposited/embraced its airborne passengers, it sets off to Milton Keynes.

But NOT via the Interchange.

It zooms via the A1081 New Airport Way to join the M1 well south of Luton. So if you were travelling from Luton to Milton Keynes, you could enjoy a jolly trip via ASDA, the airport and beautiful Bedfordshire countryside, pylons and all. 

At least Stagecoach shows the full "V" shaped timetable in one go, so you can work that out.

Oh dear! Despite the blue lines on the map, the timetable shows the MX1 returning to the Interchange via the direct route. 

Confused.com?

So what's with the pylons and the additional joy of the extra bit of the M1? What's with the full blue line loop?

Sadly fbb cannot tell you, as Stagecoach East does not provide their customers with any route map of the Luton area. Actually Stagecoach East is sadly lacking in useful maps of any kind.

But you wouldn't want your potential customers to know where the buses go, would you?

Stagecoach LAX

But they do have yet another route from Luton to the airport!

Yes it does! on a very small blind display!

The LAX combines with the MK1 (please note the easy to follow route numbers) to provide a bus every 30 minutes at Luton, to and from the airport.

The table is headed Bedford - LAX ...

... because it doesn't serve Bedford! It runs, as does the MK1, via Wigmore. The table indexed for the opposite direction ...

... shows the service from Luton to the airport again.

There is no timetable for buses FROM the airport which, logically, should run in the opposite direction.

Who knows?

From a commercial point of view, fbb wonders why Stagecoach is wasting a whole bus plus drivers, plus positioning journeys from Bedford, to provide a 30 minute frequency from Luton to the airport - when Arriva runs direct, there and back, with EIGHT buses an hour.

Now that IS loopy!

** Fbb is indebted to correspondent Julian for the phrase "the square root of nothing" which undoubtedly will describe loadings on route LAX!

 Next Weekend Variety blog : Sat 27th July 

Going Loopy At Luton (Part 1)

fbb Suffers Computer Outage

Fortunately this was not a second version of the CrowdStrike versus Microslop event of a week ago. This was probably Colin or one of his staff tripping over a wire in the Server Room in the company's offices on former railway land at Watford.

fbb's "devices" were happily reporting connection with the server but, sadly, also reporting that although connected to the gubbins, the gubbins was not connected to the interwebnet.

This encroached somewhat on blogging time hence today's posting is split into two parts.

Part One : A Is For Arriva

The majority operator between Luton centre and the the Airport is Arriva with eight buses an hour running direct Monday to Saturday. These come through from Dunstable and use the Busway.

Route A

At just ten minuted from Luton bus and rail interchange to the airport bus station this is the quickest (not quite!) and easiest link to understand.

Route F70/F77

It is joined on the busway by Arriva F70 nd F77 from Milton Keynes, routes that we met a while back. Until recently, these terminated at the Interchange, but have now been extended.

The bit of busway south of the interchange is not "guided" but it does whisk, unimpeded, under the A6 as per this Google Earth picture.

Here is a view of the bus only road from the A6 bridge.

Should that taxi be there? Here are the signs at the unimposing end of the busway ... 

... where everything joins the ordinary road network for the dash to the airport terminal.  F70/F77 follow the same route; and readers will remember that Arriva; presentation of the timetable is potty ...

... looking like four buses an hour rather than two.

In a weird quirk of timetabilation, route A is given 10 minutes for the journey from town to plane but the F70/F77 only gets a paltry 8 minutes for exactly the same stops and route.

Maybe F70/F77 buses are crewed by faster drivers or have turbo charged engines?

Maps of the busway routes have yet to be amended to show the extension of the F70/F77.

No rush chaps! Notice that the above on-line map shows route A as calling at Luton Airport Parkway station.

It doesn't, or, at least, Traveline thinks it doesn't!

It is all a bit loopy!

Route 757

Before moving on to the loopiest of loopiness, fbb should record that Arriva (trading as Green Line) ...

... runs every 30 minutes from London to the Airport ...

... and on in to the town. The 755s form Monday to Friday "commuter" journeys NOT via the airport.

There are several London stops well explained on the high quality map.

Now every 30, this service was once every 20!

Routes A1, A2

Additionally, National Express runs A1 and A2 coaches giving a half hourly service from common points. NEx offers a very poor quality map ...

... and a rather poor timetable layout. ...

... with too much "white space" making reading the times more difficult.

The coaches are nice, though,

In addition to the A1 and A2, there are many longer distance services that run via the airport. National Express claims it runs an average of three coaches every hour.

 To Be continued Thurs 26th July. 

The Red Book (2)

Timetables, What Timetables?

Back in 1958, route 22 ran from Putney Common to Homerton. Today, the route still starts at Putney Common but goes no further than Oxford Circus.

Here is detail of today's central London terminus.

And here is today's version at the Putney Common stand.

The stop is on a bit of a side road at the eastern end of The Common ...

... and just below the "black hand" of destiny (?) you can see a turning circle which, presumably, the 22 uses.

fbb did not know, at first, how much of this infrastructure is historic! 

However, the terminus in 1958 is given as "The Spencer Arms" and that hostelry (renamed "The Spencer") still stands across the road from the 22 shelter.

So here is how these "timetables" (for want of a better word) worked. For each day set we have the first and last bus over the whole route plus any extra oddments before the whole service springs into action.

Here is Monday to Friday 1958 ...

... Saturday ...

... and Sunday.

Between the "first and last" no details are given except a very broad brush guide to frequency.

You could argue that a 5-8 min headway is simply not worth showing on a full timetable - but it is not quite as simple as that. If you are making a connection with, say, a train, you really do need some idea of running time. Perhaps in 1958 the huge extensions of running times that apply today were less horrendous?

fbb wouldn't fancy his chances of making a train connection on a Sunday morning between 0832 and 1000 based on the timetable's uncertainty.

The problem is worse with today's lower frequencies.

And the current TfL web site offers a geographical map, of sorts ...

... which gets more confusing the more you enlarge it.

But in 1958 there were printed route maps ...

... a repro 1958 version being from the oeuvre of the wonderful Mike Harris.

So which offers a better service from Putney Heath to central London? 

Without proper timetables we cannot really tell, but from the very limited information available from 1958 we can measure a journey from The Heath as follows:-

Hmmm?

Confused .Com?

But what would a bus user in 1958 make of this?

What does fbb make if it? It will enlarge, but probably best not bother - it will still be baffling but just bigger!

Real Timetables

Occasionally you did get timetables showing al journeys. Some of these were simply occasional varieties or extensions of "first and last" routes. But where frequencies were low (by 1958 standards) you could get something like this.

Or even more frequent as here.

Withdrawn On Sundays

Scrolling hurriedly through the tables it was obvious that there had been a cull of Sunday only services or Sunday  frequencies on 7 day a week routes. The original owner of this book had dutifully crossed out about 15 to 20 such, Here the 4A, a Sunday variant ...

... and below Sundays are gone from a full timetable.

Out For The Night

fbb mentioned the 1958 version of night services in yesterday's blog. But these are not all-night services as we know them today, 

Here is the 292.

All of these services did NOT run on Saturday nights and early Sunday mornings ...

... so very much transport for shift or night workers and not aimed at Saturday night party goers, like fbb.

It was a very different night service from today and much less frequent.

What next from the "Red Book"?

When fbb's 1977 edition arrives, he plans to attempt a three stage comparison without safety harness or safety net.

And it will be for a route which has not changed between 1935 and 2024.

The analysis may or may not appear tomorrow - but something will!

 Next Something blog : Thursday 25th July