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| Can save around £65,700 every summer holiday (i.e every year) Is it worth it? Is it doable? It gives 3 buses a holiday at least. Better to trade rather than all-weekday cuts to service |
As you probably know, there are school-holiday Monday-Friday timetables on select bus routes. Any schedule is hard to conjure up even with the aid of Excel on our computers, still taking time from someone's hours a company would pay for just for minor adjustments in the perspective of the timetable.
Minor adjustments in the perspective of the timetable: Major adjustments in travel time London-wide.
We should also already know travel speed in London is astonishingly low, among the lowest in it's capital city peers in Europe
Therefore, is it possible to make routes use Saturday timetables on holidays, if not, why?
If it were possible to split a day schedule into segments, perhaps that'd be easiest...
Or do a 241, 5 bph on M-F shopping hours but 6 bph M-F peaks and Saturday
Some routes with heavy traffic, like 160 or 202 along the A205, as well as routes along the A406, might not be ideal to use Saturday timings which are tighter than needed to deal with the holiday traffic flow. Still better than Monday-Friday timings where your bus will sit for 2-3 minutes at each stop almost.
Routes with school holiday timetables:
33 44 51 53 54 57* 61 63 65 66** 69 70 75 77 81 83 89* 90 92 96 103** 107 109 111 118* 122 127* 131* 132* 139 140 142 147* 151* 152* 154* 155* 161 164* 174 179 183 184* 185* 191 197* 200* 204 208* 210 212* 213* 216 229 233 245 248 257 261 263 264 265 267 270 281 282 285 294 297 314 328 356 358* 368* 370** 371 386 407 422 427* 455* 463* 467 481 W13
* these are Easter and summer school holiday only
** 66 103 370 are only summer school holiday timetables
Total: 85 routes.
There is 545 daily routes in the network as of November 2023 (more to come, Superloops)
notice a lot of Go-Ahead routes have summer/Easter holiday schedules...
Select few (e.g 57 131 285) have separate Monday then Tuesday-Friday (or Tuesday-Thursday, then Friday schedule on it's own) schedules of course.
Imagine if all those routes didn't have holiday timetables. You're looking at an extra bus in operation on 5 days a week, (assuming £200,000 to operate annually) you're looking at a ballpark figure of £1,863,013.
[200,000 / 365 * (8 holiday weeks * 5 M-F days) = £21917 per bus
21917 * 85 routes = £1,863,013]
No wonder those routes have dedicated holiday schedules.
You'll notice an inherent lack of central London routes in the list I gave.
So let's apply the same maths above to other Outer London routes not in the list.
(around 275 bus routes)
£6,027,397
(reduced cost estimate figure)
I should stress, some routes should not have these cuts (reusing the example of 160/202 and 34 along busy roads), as running time is gold at this rate with the running time reductions in a world apparently devoid of 20mph speed limits.
I should also stress many low-frequency routes won't even save a bus at all, further reducing the true cost.
This is an umbrella figure, more of an up to for what can be done.
If we still halve the impossible figure to account the issues, you get;
£3,013,699
(reduced cost estimate figure)
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Journey time comparisons on one of the routes, (53 is busiest, so worse case scenario... but not available so 57's my next worst guinea pig)
Tue-Thur schooldays:
0830 Clapham Park to Kingston 0954 = 84 mins
0830 Kingston to Clapham Park 0959 = 89 mins
1624 Clapham Park to Kingston 1803 = 99 mins
1630 Kingston to Clapham Park 1809 = 99 mins
Tue-Thur school holiday:
0830 Clapham Park to Kingston 0952 = 82 mins (-2)
0831 Kingston to Clapham Park 0951 = 80 mins (-9)
1628 Clapham Park to Kingston 1801 = 93 mins (-6)
1627 Kingston to Clapham Park 1759 = 92 mins (-7)
Saturday:
0825 Clapham Park to Kingston 0929 = 64 mins (-20)(-18 hol)
0829 Kingston to Clapham Park 0935 = 66 mins (-23)(-14 hol)
1626 Clapham Park to Kingston 1749 = 83 mins (-16)(-10 hol)
1628 Kingston to Clapham Park 1658 = 90 mins (-9)(-2 hol)
As you can see, the difference in running times between school-holidays and Saturdays is capable of saving 2 buses, at 57's frequency that's a maximum of 2 buses from the normal Tue-Thur schedule (since it's unfortunately every 12 now). Devising an entire school holiday schedule will definitely save one bus on schedule as seen in 57's case.
Since each bus on 57 on average costs{ 6,560,000 / 19 = £345,623 }
a little under half a million to run, it makes sense for this high profile route to have such a schedule - you would think - wrong!
The 57 is among the many routes listed above to have school day operation journeys - no wonder it has a school holiday timetable. It simply does not need school-timed extras running during the off period, a definite waste of resources.
The 57 still has healthy run time during the holidays which is needed for the many traffic spots it faces. You rid slightly predictable school traffic, you get unpredictable off-peak traffic in return. Adults still also work.
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Lower Saturday frequencies
There are routes that have lower Saturday frequencies compared to their Mon-Fri frequencies.
The 55 and 279 among the busiest examples, 54 175 193 are examples, 217 433 among the lesser examples.
On the other hand, some routes have the same frequency but higher PVR on Saturdays, the 58 and P4 to name some.
A sure-fire way of cost-cutting are these anomaly bus routes;
outer London routes with different Saturday frequencies (buses per hour / every x minutes):
4 bph to 3 bph [every 15 to every 20]
W13
5 bph to 4 bph [every 12 to every 15]
217
6 bph to 4 bph [every 10 to every 15]
433
6 bph to 5 bph [every 10 to every 12]
54 66 175 193 252 486 EL3 W19
6.66 bph to 6 bph [every 9 to every 10]
468
7 bph to 6 bph [every 8-9 to every 10]
212
7.5 bph to 6 bph [every 7-8 to every 10]
35 472 EL2 W15
8.5 bph to 7.5 bph [every 7 to every 8]
55 174
10 bph to 9 bph [every 6 to every 6-7]
W3
11 bph to 10 bph [every 5-6 to every 6]
EL1
reduction in Vehicle Requirement: -49
(same maths, assuming £200,000 to operate annually)
[200,000 / 365 * (8 holiday weeks * 5 M-F days) = £21917 per bus
21917 * 85 routes = £1,863,013]
£1,073,972
(reduced cost estimate figure)
For funs let's also add the Central routes (which I highlighted already, 35 and 55; -10 PVR)
Even if it makes less sense as adults that commute to work, tend to still commute to work even when schools are closed. Shock(!)
New total: £1,293,510
(reduced cost estimate figure)
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So it bears the question, why Good Friday uses Saturday timetables?
It's a general holiday on Easter with guaranteed less traffic, in some cases a level of traffic similar to a Sunday.
Addressing Saturday run times being tight for normal holidays
A way around the issue of run time for some routes is to have one more bus on stand at once. As demonstrated with the 57 example, for busy routes you would need 1 less bus than on normal weekdays, but 1 more bus than on Saturdays.
The phenomenon of backplating whereby a bus takes swaps running numbers with it's leader, usually when there's a bus down, or other reasons.
The next problem is the error this will definitely cause, as backplating is meant to be temporary and not permanent. Hence... regular schedules. We're back to square one!
Perhaps there's another workaround to that issue I am not aware of.
At current, the likes of 403 only has 1 on stand at West Croydon mostly until evenings it seems where it has 2 on stand. Schedules can change as of the typing of this post.
Different alternative?
Another is, as alluded to italics at the start, is something I would call: Modular schedules
No more of one full day schedule, no more of this hassle of completely writing up a schedule from scratch (maybe avoids failure to win a route, ahem 220 in 2011)
- Mon-Sat morning modular schedule (0300-0700)
- Sunday morning modular schedule (etc)
- Mon-Fri daytime modular schedule (0700-1900)
- Mon-Fri holiday daytime modular schedule (etc)
- Saturday daytime modular schedule (etc)
- Sunday daytime modular schedule (etc)
- Evening modular schedule (2000-0200)
--- Duplicates for routes with different evening frequencies
A lot more intimidating than just seeing "Mon-Fri sc days" "Mon-Fri sc hol" "Sat" "Sun"
Perhaps easier to just spend hours compiling a single schedule, multiply that for however many schedules needed. Beats me how you'd glue modular schedules into a cohesive file usable into systems.
Less schedule upload failures on TfL's part (buses not appearing on countdown and/or iBus displaying asterisk whilst in service)
There must be a realistic reason why this hasn't been done, it must've been thought of before.
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My conclusion: Doable no matter difficulty, should be done
Go-Ahead proves that holiday schedules are a useful way to cut corners so it should be endorsed by all parties. Every little helps.
As long as it avoids cutting necessary veins, as opposed to fat.
Another food for thought.
As always, stay safe and until the next one!
Yes I did count all the routes, here:
no 10 48 82 84
no 168
no 271
no 305 310 311 334 338 342 348 351 361 369 373 374 387 391 392
no 402 408 409 416 420 421 426 431 435 437 438 439 441 442 443 445 446 447 448 449 451 454 457 458 459 461 471 475 477 478 479 480 489 494 495
500-53=443
533 549
100 prefix routes
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