Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: neilep on 19/09/2011 11:25:11
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As a sheepy I of course don't take buses !...I have a chauffeur, a limo and a cocktail bar.
There are other individuals I believe called the proletariat....a sub species I believe !...they don't have limos and they get from one locale to another by sometimes using a thing called a bus !
A bus is a big car with lots of seats....it is important to not confuse it with a cabbage !
Look, here is a bus !
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A Bus
...and here is a cabbage !
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A Cabbage
It's important to understand that ewe should not board a cabbage as this is silly and wrong .......they are usually late and unreliable.
Anyway, to the point in hand (finally)
Buses follow things called bus routes and I would like to know what is the science behind the determination of a bus route ?......do ewe know ?....cos I don't !
I think it would be nice to know.
...and if ewe have bothered to read this far then I am sure ewe are eager to know too !
hugs and shmishes
mwah mwah mwah
neil
Chauffeured Sheepy
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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I happen to have boarded one of those Omnibus devices just last week! It had not one but two Transport-for-London(TfL) bods onboard.
The first handed out forms (marked with a code for the stop of boarding) and asking the purpose of the commuter's journey.
It also asked traveller's opinion of how they viewed their ethnic origin [::)] (I didn't notice Sheepy on the form BTW!). - I put 'Central Saharan' as I believe my oldest -human- relatives were from somewhere around there! [:D]
The other bod had the joyous task of collecting said forms upon disembarkation and filling in a second code for said stop.
I believe this random sample has something to do with a strange idea known as 'statistics'... A silly word if ever there were one! [;)]
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The first handed out forms (marked with a code for the stop of boarding) and asking the purpose of the commuter's journey.
It also asked traveller's opinion of how they viewed their ethnic origin [::)] (I didn't notice Sheepy on the form BTW!). - I put 'Central Saharan' as I believe my oldest -human- relatives were from somewhere around there! [:D]
psephologists and polesters have created a special hell for people like you (and those who answer jedi knight on the census). Anyway I thought our eldest relative were from east africa rather than north - OK there is a dedicated hell for people like me too
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Bus routes are created so that the buses from all the routes that go past your stop all arrive at the same time. The algorithm used to accomplish this is incredibly complex and only runs on very expensive supercomputers.
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UPS in the US adopted 'RIGHT TURN PRIORITIZED" ROUTES IN THE US....Peans drive on the wrongside so u gotta figure ur own resolve
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psephologists and polesters have created a special hell for people like you (and those who answer jedi knight on the census). Anyway I thought our eldest relative were from east africa rather than north - OK there is a dedicated hell for people like me too
I just imagine hell is actually run by an anally-retentive pollster too[:D]
As for -your- ancestors from the East, my hominid forefathers (from the West) always apparently said they'd come to no good [;)]
Bus routes are created so that the buses from all the routes that go past your stop all arrive at the same time. The algorithm used to accomplish this is incredibly complex and only runs on very expensive supercomputers.
Yes. The maths is very interesting actually. It takes around 200 teraflops to ensure that 3 buses arrive together at your stop, but it would take longer than the lifetime of the universe to calculate for four buses!
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It had not one but two Transport-for-London(TfL) bods onboard.
Don't you mean clippies?
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Buses follow things called bus routes and I would like to know what is the science behind the determination of a bus route ?......do ewe know ?....cos I don't !
I think it would be nice to know.
--- Bus routes ---
I think the method goes something like this:
1) take a map
2) mark on the bus stations. All routes begin and end at a bus station
3) mark on the main shopping centres - many of the buses will visit the shopping centres
4) mark on the hospitals. If ANY bus goes within half it's total route-length of a hospital then it MUST take a diversion to the hospital (in practice this means almost every bus in an area will go to the hospital)
5) mark on the major train stations. If a bus goes somewhat near a major train station it may take a diversion via the station. Small stations can be ignored.
6) apply the principle of Fractals to draw the remainer of the route. Note that diversions to hospitals/stations and tours of council estates are excellent ways to achieve the mandatory Fractal Miles.
--- Bus route maps ---
While train routes are generally fairly well documented, with various simplified maps and coloured line drawings, bus operators typically struggle to convey their routes in an easy-to-understand way.
If you have a FREE BUS PASS and plenty of TIME you can while away a day taking 'mystery tours' to discover where the buses go. You might even find they go in different routes to different places at different times of day.
--- Bus times ---
Since the main purpose of buses is to get non-working people to the shops, the frequency of buses can be very low after 6pm and before 9am. Buses are not required after half-an-hour before pub closing time, because people leaving the pub are perfectly capable of walking 5-6miles.
Buses are not required at all after 6pm on Sundays as the shops have shut by then and nobody goes to church/cinema/restaurant/pub or socialises on a Sunday evening anyway.
Unlike trains which by and large actually run to a timetable, for buses a timetable is purely a document; higher-level statistics would be required to determine any correlation between the actual arrival of buses and the document. There is no need for buses to run to time, as no-one in their right mind who actually needs to be somewhere at a specific time would ever consider taking a bus.
*** Note that not all of this analysis applies to London. In particular, London entertains the concept of Night Buses...
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Sounds a bit like the travelling salesman problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem)
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Life is stranger than fiction
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-14969321
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Life is stranger than fiction
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-14969321
They must have used the "Not Travelling Salesman Problem."