CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years old!
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It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
I don't think that it's untrue as such. However, buses are slowed down by so many other things - parked cars, queuing traffic, red lights, pedestrians crossing, waiting to pull out and, most of all, decelerating to the bus stops
And, of course, waiting at bus stops until all the other buses at the bus stop have finished letting off and picking up passengers...
Once a fortnight, I do a trip from Sighthill to Eskbank on the no 3 bus. Door-to-door, it takes about 1hr 25 mins, of which about 15 mins is walking to, and waiting at, the bus stop.
I don't paricularly mind the trip, just the time it takes. I decided I would try it on the bike and was fortunate to get a day with a nice tail-wind. It took me 40 minutes at a brisk pace, so something less than half the time, which was good.
I used the journey planner on cyclestreets.net to guide me and the 'balanced' route it came up with was quite good. Typically, the 'quietest' route involved lengthy diversions to pick up off-road paths and was 3 miles longer. Somewhat stranger, was the 'fastest' route which was timed as 1 minute longer than the 'balanced' route, involved lots of climbing and, most alarmingly, a trip along the by-pass from Straiton to Lasswade.
Cycling from the Gyle to Leith takes me between 27 and 35 minutes (depending on the wind direction and strength, and congestion on Ferry Road!).
Getting the 22 bus can take between and hour and 1hr 20 mins (and that's not counting the walk to the bus stop and the waiting around for the bus to come).
In order of speed from home to work:
bike - 12 mins
Car - 15 mins
Walk - 50 mins
Bus - 60 mins
Admittedly the final two have a sample size of 1 instance each - and I missed the original bus and had to wait 25 mins for the (late) next one.
Find Properly has used TFL's journey planner and average cycling times
Bike/Walking/Driving timing are easy, distance at a fixed fair average just like google.
Bus timings probably need to take into account a postcodes distance from a bus stop and the frequency of the service to give a fair representation. Both of which would require access to propriety data which I assume the housing website has access to.
Dave, do you still have your average bus speeds data?
Dave, do you still have your average bus speeds data?
Easy enough to work out "official" averages from the timetables.
I've only done a few rides, mainly because the buses are so slow I can't afford to travel by bus in Edinburgh (by any reasonable definition of the word).
I have been meaning to add the 44 and 34 to the coverage already written: http://mccraw.co.uk/lothian-buses-20mph-limit/
The point of that was to observe how little they went above 20mph though, rather than the average speeds (as Kaputnik says, those follow from the timetable)
Looking again at the property company map again there probably isn't any need for data. Just paint the whole thing green.
The London one is green out to about 15 miles, based on KGX to Cockfosters. A 15 mile radius from Princes Street will include virtually all of Edinburgh.
A 15 mile radius from Princes Street will include virtually all of Edinburgh
By virtually you mean actually!
Also virtually all of Midlothian, good slices of Fife, West and East Lothian. As far east as Gullane, as far west as Bathgate, as far south as West Linton and as far north as Kirkcaldy.
It really is a rather compact place.
By virtually you mean actually!
I was slightly hedging there, I wasn't sure and figured if I said actually some one would come out with some where I hadn't thought off.
Lothian buses say 20mph limit would ruin service
Featuring one Dave McCraw, of this parish.
Unless he's prepared to repeat these journeys several hundred (possibly thousands of times) at various times of day and throughout the year, his calculations are meaningless.
Scuppered by the superior mind of a chipwrapper commentator. Bet you never thought of that Dave!
I'd love to get my hands on LB tracking data.
Knocked this up at lunchtime (click for big). Only for the No. 22 on the West Approach road does the average service speed approach 20mph (and there's only 2 stops on that segment!)
"it's quicker by bike"
P.S. I based these on pre-7AM timetable, however there doesn't appear to be any "give" to differentiate these times from peak hours. If a segment is down for 7 minutes at 6AM, it's also 7 minutes at 830AM.
What I noticed was that there's very little difference between the bus times and what google was suggesting as a cycling time. I think my average speed around town by bike is about 13 or 14mph, and I probably rarely get much over 19mph. Yes I'm not stopping for passengers, but I have to stop at all the same lights, I can't take shortcuts like the West Approach Road and my performance is inhibitied by wind and hills and over about 10mph I accellerate slower than a bus.
Of course it could all be "proved" either way if the bustracker data was opened up to inspection. I'm sure LB have nothing to hide so I'm sure they'll do this.
Ahem.
Last time around I invited anyone who sits on a bus for whatever reason to send me a GPX. Many phones can give quite adequate results.
It would be interesting to collate the data, in the inevitable absence of anything real from LB themselves.
The EEN commenters are just a modern day equivalent of the Chicken Licken parable. ARGH! The sky is falling down!
Complaining about being stuck in gridlock, and at the same time complaining about not being able to drive above a lower limit that they can't reach because of that gridlock seems particularly hard of thinking. I do worry that some of them shouldn't be out of the house without a minder...
"Of course it could all be "proved" either way if the bustracker data was opened up to inspection. I'm sure LB have nothing to hide so I'm sure they'll do this."
Could the API not be used to harvest this data? Actually thinking about it that could get very confusing as I guess it only provides the time before a bus will get to a certain stop without identifying the actual bus.
I have GPS, a bus pass, an unusual fondness of buses and a lot of free time at the moment. Happy to collect some bus speed data - any requests?
@Rosscbrown Leith Walk is the current hot potato.
I think some slightly more suburban routes would be better to, where LB think it's appropriate for buses to barrel along at (what they imagine) is 40mph.
@rust yes would need the actuals out of the system, not the rather random projections it makes for buses (which in my limited experience of using the bus these days can be woefully off)
@rust, we already know the true average speed from the timetables. What is not known is how much time the buses spend stationary and how fast they travel when moving.
Lothian Buses are basically arguing that while service 44 averages 12mph (they admit this, it's their published timetable) that when the buses are moving they go much faster than 20mph - so if a 20 zone was put in place it would compromise the service.
Unfortunately the bus tracker app can't help with this - we'd need the actual bus GPS tracks (assuming that's how the system works). It's tempting to submit a FOI but I'm guessing they'd weasel out of it under 'not reasonable' or 'too time consuming'.
The only real way is for upstanding local heroes (hi, rosscbrown!) to record GPS traces of actual journeys. It's then trivial to analyse the number of seconds spent travelling at any given speed, diff the area under the graph with one driven at a max of 20mph to get total delay.
Even then it's ultra conservative, my original article assumed that each second translated to a second's delay whereas of course it should be modified by the proportion of time the buses spend stuck in queues anyway...
It's tempting to submit a FOI but I'm guessing they'd weasel out of it under 'not reasonable' or 'too time consuming'.
As a PLC, the FOI Act cannot be used on Lothian Buses.
I deliberately chose the early morning timetables as I assume is that this is when buses are most able to stick to timetable (less traffic and less passengers), therefore this is the optimum service speed.
@kappers, from the Lothian Buses site...
"As Lothian Buses plc is owned entirely by public authorities, we’re subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
When a request is made for information held by us, we’ll supply it in line with the provisions of the Act. Various conditions and exemptions set out in the Act may apply."
@davec What's the best way of going about this? Got a Garmin 510 and a day to devote to this...
Ps. I like to think of myself as more of a 'national' hero.
I'd start with a day ticket!
'Local' Hero has a better theme tune...
Indeed! You know what to do, chaps!
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/lothian_buses
I would stress that the wording of the question is vitally important when making an FOI request.
Sit on bus and switch your Garmin on. I did a similar thing in Livingston (without the sitting on a bus), Bike won.
Strava traces at bottom, never mind all the gubbins beforehand
http://baldcyclist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/even-if-it-is-never-used-i-say-build-it.html
As an exemplar, perhaps look at the model provided by this enquiry (not yet answered) to Transport Scotland on Strict Liability research:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/evidence_regarding_liability_law#incoming-426392
I'm sure there are folk here who would like to read the reply!
(Declaration of interest: the questioner works for the Edinburgh Greens).
As Lothian Buses plc is owned entirely by public authorities, we’re subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
Fab! Glad to have been corrected. (I know that it doesn't work on Cycling Scotland, however, as they are a charidee)
If one records a journey using a phone and Strava, is it possible to get a GPX trace out of Strava, once the data has been uploaded to it?
(This assumes I remember to record any bus journey I make in the first place.)
Fimm, yep, open activity in Strava. Under the 'Summary' tab, right at the bottom of that is an "actions' drop down, select that and then right at the bottom is 'Export GPX'
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