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