I know this is not exactly the thread for it, but as it is still a bus thread, shoot me. I am still extremely annoyed at the policy of stopping buses at a stop ‘to help regulate’ the service.
That's nothing. Imagine getting the 170 to Victoria and they terminate it early at the Royal Army Museum or the 344 to tooting and you get chucked off at Battersea power station and then have to wait 10 minutes in the pouring rain for the next one to arrive
Back when the 253 and 254 were one bus, iirc my record for spotting buses in a row at Stamford Hill (about slap bang in the middle of the route) was 5 buses then a car then a sixth bus. That was exceptional, but three in a row was very common, followed by a huge gap.
yes - think i encountered 6 buses together on route 8 once.
to go back to the original question, at one point in time, buses would just sit and wait somewhere if they were running early (usually the stop before a town centre location where there might be an inspector) - although since overtime was rounded up or down to the nearest quarter hour, a bus running 6 or 7 minutes late would never arrive at the crew relief point less than 8 minutes late and the driver / crew would also lose a minute or two to achieve this.
there are ways of losing time subtly rather than sitting and waiting, and in theory the box of tricks in the driver's cab of a london bus should show the driver if they are starting to get close to the bus in front without control needing to tell them to sit and wait (and many controllers will ask drivers to slow down a bit rather than stop and wait.) Although it's sod's law that if you're running late, you will always get later for whatever reason, but if you're running early and trying to lose a bit of time, every traffic light will stay green however much you slow down.
Ultimately with London buses, the customer is TFL and performance is largely measured by their computers, and the bus operators get paid a bonus (or get paid less) depending on exceeding / failing to meet TFL targets. On 'frequent' routes (every 12 minutes or better) TFL measure punctuality by 'excess waiting time' (i.e. how often there's a gap of more than the advertised headway, rather than each bus being on its exact time - in theory if every single bus on this route is running an hour late, the public won't see the join.)
In practice, this can result in everything ending up at the speed of the slowest bus / driver out there, and control also have to balance this with trying not to lose mileage somewhere, and also with getting drivers back to base at the right time for their break / end of duty (drivers hours rules are not negotiable, and if driver is late finishing the first half of their duty, then it can louse up the second half) so buses will get 'turned short' if there's no other option.
Some controllers are better than others at it, and if they come back to a route after dealing with an emergency somewhere else, they might try a bit too hard in one go. Buses being held a stop or two before a point where a lot of passengers want to get off is bloody annoying. As is getting within sight of the bus in front, then getting held, then turned short...
royalartillerymuseum.com
, presuming you qualify for a bus pass, is that valid for the whole of Britain, or are there separate Scottish, Welsh and English bus passes not valid outside their own jurisdictions?
