London Buses: Battling Back Against Delays & Decline
LondonThe largest bus company is opening a state-of-the-art control hub in an attempt to counteract...delays...which has caused a sharp drop in the amount of travellers.
Throughout London's bus system,The number of passengers travelling fell by approximately eight percent during January and February.– in contrast to the previous year, whilst there was an approximate three per cent increase in Tube travel.
Transport for LondonThere was also a 15% rise in the number of grievances lodged by bus users.passengers, mainly concerning holdups andbusesNot pulling over to collect passengers.
The Standard reported last year that the pace of buses had...Traffic speeds have dipped under 7 mph in certain areas of central London.Because of road repairs, heavy traffic, and the sheer volume of delivery vans and private hire cars using the roads.
Go-Ahead, responsible for running 2,400 buses on behalf of Transport for London (TfL), representing approximately 28% of London's total bus network, has launched a new operations hub. This aims to boost the dependability and on-time performance of bus services used by over a million commuters daily.
This centralises six control centres into a single advanced hub at the firm’s Stockwell bus garage, and allows managers 24/7 oversight of all its 170 routes.
Real-time data is transmitted from each of the company's buses to the control centre, allowing controllers to react immediately to various problems, such as the 800 electric buses needing a recharge or unforeseen traffic events.
"By spotting potential issues early and acting on them, we can ultimately improve the customer experience," Go-Ahead Bus CEO Matt Carney stated to The Standard.
The updated control centre is slated to be operational by the close of August, and its performance monitoring capabilities will be implemented gradually in the months that follow.
Information on road congestion, roadworks, bus departures and vehicle availability and reliability beamed onto giant screens on the walls.
Each controller is typically responsible for three routes, ensuring the correct “spacing” between buses, and dealing with problems such as road congestion and broken-down vehicles.
There is also a dedicated incident manager able to handle major events on the road network, plus an engineer who is “embedded” in the centre and able to give drivers expert mechanical advice over the radio.
But the technology is now so advanced that the engineer can often tell from the information beamed back from each bus’s engine management system whether a vehicle has an issue – often before the driver can see it.
This can include issues with low or high engine pressure, overheating systems or a lack of coolant.
The system will also indicate whether any electric buses have a “critical battery level” and are at risk of running out of power mid-route.
If this happens, a fully charged bus is dispatched and switched with the vehicle that is starting to “flag”.
“When a bus is at 25 per cent we start to think about taking it off the road,” Mr Carney said.
Bus firms are penalised by TfL for “lost mileage” – namely, when not enough buses complete the miles specified in the contract.
There is also the challenge of ensuring each bus completes its full route according to the timetable - especially in areas where the speed limit has been cut from 30mph to 20mph as Tfl bids to cut the number of road deaths and serious injuries.
But bus journeys are taking longer – typically in excess of 34 minutes for an average bus ride across London – and this causes a range of problems.
Instead of getting extra money for doing well, bus companies might end up being fined by Transport for London (TfL).
Mr Carney said: “We can control [bus] frequency. We can control reliability. But, as an operator, we can’t control speed. Each of these things is critical.”
He added: “One of the challenges on the network in London is the schedule itself. When an operator wins a contract, you win a seven-year contract.
“But a lot can happen in that period, especially to the road network. Traffic speeds are down generally in London. That means you are running a schedule based on seven-year-old road conditions.”
Go-Ahead’s electric bus fleet includes the SL4 Superloop, which began running in April between Canary Wharf and Grove Park when the Silvertown tunnel opened.
Go-Ahead also operates the route 358 “tram bus” – which has charging points at either end of its Crystal Palace to Orpington route – and the 132 that is the first in London to be charged via an overhead pantograph.
But Mr Carney warned that mayor Sir Sadiq Khan’s ambition to have London’s entire bus fleet “zero emission” by 2030 was dependent on bus garages being able to source more electricity from the National Grid.
“A bus garage will need between 6-8 megs of power,” Mr Carney said. “That is the equivalent of a data centre. Most of that is required overnight.
“The issue is the lead time in how we plan for it. That is probably the biggest risk in getting [a zero emission bus fleet] by 2030.”
Go-Ahead last year placed a £500m order with Wrightbus for more than 1,000 electric double deckers, many of which will come to London over the next three years.
Mr Carney said that TfL needed to “bundle” routes together when awarding contracts, to make it viable for bus operators to upgrade the power supply at specific locations.
Stockwell, despite its strategic significance, has yet to be converted, in part due to its listed status.
Mr Carney said: “We can deliver on the buses. We can deliver on the infrastructure. The thing that we need is the power.
“I think it’s achievable but we need to be able to go to the Grid now and say: ‘This is the energy we need at these garages.’”
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