CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
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.
"The 1 and the 6 used to run as circles, one going one way and one going the other. At one point the 2 and 12 were also circular compliments."
Aye, I remember these services. As IWRATS alludes the 1/6 circulat were often a value for money substitute for a bus tour of the city, though you needed time on your hands. I remember being a bit confused when the 1 turned into a speedy shuttle service through the city centre and thence to points west. However it is a lot handier than the old 1.
UofE has a lot to answer for...
(See posts on previous page.)
I remember the old 1 and 6 which I used to catch a lot. Really enjoyed the trundle through the Old Town.
I was talking to my bus driver pal last night, and he said that the non Princes Street routes don't get used much, and that everyone's destination was Princes Street. If they're foreign, it's the Castle.
@chdot Re Gehl's ideas for Princes Street. I've always been a little uneasy about pedestrianising the place. Yes, include cycle lanes but what a city centre needs is people pouring in & they do pour in to Princes Street to shop, even though the shops are the chain ones – in fact the street is like a long uncovered pulled out shopping centre.
Many cities have a mini bus station where most of the local buses stop at platforms. Princes Street is a long bus station – well, let it remain so. Cycle lanes yes, narrow the pavement on the north side to make room for them, but Princes Street is for access not a destination except for special events. Its shop side is dull but there are other pleasanter streets running parallel and at right angles. It's also access to the galleries, old town and the gardens. So let it stay like that. The people will continue to pour in during the day at least, while the night is for the Southside or Cowgate. Scotland's weather means streets aren't really for night strolling as they are in eg Barcelona.
@R
Princes St is complicated!
It must be possible to have the things you want with fewer routes/buses.
Of course something as simple as a smartcard/Oyster system with fast readers would make a big difference!
@chdot Yes - getting the buses through.
Glad to say my bus driver pal has the same complaint as the cyclists. Buses, lorries, will be abused for holding up the traffic, the traffic being mostly single occupancy cars.
"the traffic being mostly single occupancy cars"
Indeed!
The problem is not so much that (car) drivers don't understand/care, but that Governments/councils are reluctant to deal with them.
Edinburgh is better than many but still *hopes* that car use will decline if they add a few more painted lines.
To be fair (hah) there is now a small desire for segregated cycle routes. Unfortunately a few traders (and a deceitful rabble rouser) is enough to scare the feart.
I still regard the Bridges/Minto Street as the principal axis of the city for that reason
Having grown up in Corstorphine, my personal principal axis is east-west along the A8, then bending slightly northeast at Waterloo Place down Leith Walk towards my Nana's. Everything north of Lorne Street was dragons though.
I was talking to my bus driver pal last night, and he said that the non Princes Street routes don't get used much,
I remember Lothian Buses used to keep telling everyone that nobody used the 49 which is why it had to be a single decker with hardly any seats to allow for pram-pushing wheelchair users. I avoided it as much as possible at is was so horribly crammed with passengers even during the day in the so called quiet times. They eventually, grudgingly put on a double decker which is very well used. I always found the 38 to be busy too, despite not going to Princes Street and being horribly unreliable.
I do like the idea of a single ticket that lasts for a certain amount of time though, this makes it more feasible to make a journey that requires more than one bus.
As a kid in Gilmerton, our buses were mainly bridges to the town, however the 32 circle was a brilliant bus, went along frogston road along to wester hailes / sighthill etc.
Don't know if it even runs now, but was brilliant at the time, used it to get to and from Napier at sighthill.
Nelly, sounds like the circle route has been split up into several sections. The 18 goes from the Royal Infirmary to Gogar, the 32 goes from Sighthill to Granton and the 8 takes you from Granton back to the hospital.
Selecting routes 8, 18 and 21 on the LB website map (https://lothianbuses.co.uk/timetables-and-maps/route-maps) shows indeed you can take a somewhat disjointed circle around the city.
I was also surprised to find a service 39 and 40 which at no point run anywhere in the Edinburgh boundary. 63 is within the council boundary but gets no further east into the city than Longstone depot.
39, 40 - wow news to me too!
Shows LB can put on routes to match (unexpected?) demand.
How would such routes look worth running a service on??
63 is within the council boundary
This service was the only route LB could come up with (when pushed) as a service to Queensferry. They have never wanted to try to compete with Stagecoach (or First Bus previously) on a direct route into town. A previous attempt in the 90s didn't last long.
Locally there is frustration that LB can provide services to Mid & East Lothian but not to a part of Edinburgh. Now there is a push to get LB to provide something else as Stagecoach have been dire recently (late/missing buses), cost much more than LB (£3.30 single) and have just reduced/changed their afternoon & evening services. Part of their change is due to the huge tailbacks Nbound to the FRB which really mucked up the timetable.
But nobody is expecting any imminent changes.
"39, 40 - wow news to me too!"
You should of course know all about the 40 at least as it was mentioned on this thread.
The 61 and 69 are curious little services are they not? Is the 61 basically the Standard Life bus??
"You should of course know all about the 40 at least as it was mentioned on this thread."
True, but I never looked at the actual route then!
When the 40 was launched the route started in Porty. You had the enviable joy of having direct buses to Penicuik from either side of the road (15). Those heady days.
The service 40 was the relaunch of an older, similar route that served the colliery at Newcraighall from Portobello and Brunstane. The route could only use single deckers as there was a low rail bridge (can't recall if that's the one they chopped down).
I reckon the solution to the Princes Street issue is a smart card/transfer system.
I rarely take a day saver ticket but when I do I'm always pleasantly impressed at how quick and easy it is to surf 2 or 3 buses from Broughton via Princes Street to somewhere in the west, be it the Cameo or the Zoo or Hermiston Gait. With some sensible interchanging (and, hey, more frequent trams that aren't so held up by buses) you don't need all those buses going along Princes Street, getting in the way, polluting or noisome things up. The displaced buses could then be used for more frequent radial or circular routes.
Lothian Buses, however, fear change and love revenue protection, so why would they do anything that was for the benefit of the passenger rather than the farebox?
On the issue of LB competing with Stagecoach, I think there must be an element of "lessons hard learned" in the company management; they fought wasteful and unproductive bus battles in the late 80s with Eastern Scottish and more particularly mid-late 90s with their bigger successor FirstBus. They won both battles ultimately, which is pretty unusual for a smaller, local operator against the "big boys". Why indulge in another wasteful bus war (that they might not win) when they've proved capable of running a pretty successful and profitable Edinburgh-centric network and maintain high investment levels. Particularly when the council want to collect their "divvy" each year.
They've let FirstBus dominate East and Mid Lothian and gradually picked up the slack where First rolled back the old Eastern and Lowland networks, to the point where First have now pulled out of both and let LB take over the routes, albeit they've done it through distinctively branded subsidiaries. While First still dominate West Lothian and Stagecoach the routes to Fife, I think it's very unlikely they'll try and provoke either by entering "their" territory with a better, cheaper service. Yeah that's not how bus deregulation and privatisation was meant to work, but too many ex-municipal (most of them in fact) were either crushed or simply run into submission and bought over.
There's maybe also still an element that Lothian is struggling to think outside the Edinburgh Corporation / Lothian Region Transport historical box of where it should and shouldn't run buses.
A friend and I were on the Southside and had a couple of hours to kill. We didn't want a drink. In a warmer climate we would have bought newspapers and sat on some steps somewhere. This was Edinburgh and a gale was blowing. We both had passes so got on to the top deck of a bus and drove out to Straiton. We could read in comfort & chat. The driver was a little surprised that we took the bus straight back again but when we explained saw our point - drinks cost a fortune in central Edinburgh.
When I have visitors from New Zealand they love getting day savers and being taken round on the top deck of a bus.
Lothian Buses are very good and they do offer reasonable wages and training. Bad point for the drivers though is the constant surveillance. That's why they're inflexible jobsworths. If they let someone on with a damaged bike on a quiet route someone would take a picture and twitter it and they'd be hauled over the coals.
Our society is part Stasi, part Trip Advisor.
so why would they do anything that was for the benefit of the passenger rather than the farebox?
The first time I used an Oyster card in London I was blown away by the comparison with transport pricing in our capital. I wrote to LRB suggesting all sorts of things - like time limited tickets and so on.
Got a really nice reply from a gent who had thought long and hard. He gently explained to me the level of state funding for buses down there (lots) compared to here (none). Their only revenue is the farebox and some advertising, so yes, they protect the farebox as they can't do anything else.
"Their only revenue is the farebox and some advertising, so yes, they protect the farebox as they can't do anything else."
Yes but, a smartcard system would automatically charge a dayticket rate if people got the 3rd bus, without the time spent putting the money in the box (one or more times) and collecting a ticket.
Plus I wonder how much revenue is lost by people waving out of date daytickets.
Yes but, a smartcard system
Totally. They just didn't then have the money for the radio network that required. Tech gets cheaper and they've saved their pennies....
Think there's a notion that SG *might* (part) pay for a Scotland wide system.
"Their only revenue is the farebox and some advertising, so yes, they protect the farebox as they can't do anything else."
Whilst operating a capped smartcard system they could still do that thing they do with their app at the moment and have a large minimum top-up amount and short expiry time.
The Oyster card system belongs to Transport for London. They own all the ticket machines and employ all the revenue protection staff. London bus routes are franchised by TfL - who pay the operators a management fee, while TfL collect all the fare revenue. As TfL own the tube, DLR, tram, river bus and are the franchising authority for the Overground, they can easily deploy an integrated ticketing system.
The fragmented nature of public transport provision in Scotland makes implementing a smartcard system more difficult - and there is no incentive for operators to co-operate, as it could result in a loss of revenue.
The SG were going to roll out the "Saltire Card" - but Transport Scotland made an enormous balls-up of the whole thing and now try and pretend it never really happened.
"but Transport Scotland made an enormous balls-up of the whole thing and now try and pretend it never really happened"
This is well documented and Parliamentary committee scrutinised of course(?)
they could still do that thing they do with their app at the moment
For those carrying 'smart' 'phones', mibbe, aye.
The less said about the LB app, the better (I've whinged at length about it on another thread or three)
'The SG were going to roll out the "Saltire Card"'
Naaah. Wasted opportunity. SpootCard, or just the Spoot.
LB have shown some willingness to occasionally do some things for the convenience of the customer, like not requiring them to know how many Fare Stages they'll be passing through or whether the driver expects them to state their destination or the amount of money they've placed in the hopper, or allowing day tickets to be purchased earlier than 09:30.
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