How did certain European cities discover integrated networks?

[johncrossley]

It is well known that cities in several European countries, particularly in Switzerland, Germany and Austria, have particularly integrated networks. This means that you often need to change vehicle to reach the city centre, but on the other hand the network also caters for traffic not just to the city centre. Whereas in the UK is has long been assumed that most or all routes need to go to the city centre directly, even before bus deregulation reinforced this idea.

How did those European cities arrive at that network design philosophy? Were networks always like this or did they have to face criticism from the general public before implementing such networks?

 

[30907]

Can't quite understand your point, do you have an example in mind?

Pending that: most cities in the countries you mention have tram/pre-metro/metro penetrative the city centre - changing would be most likely from newer suburbs (where a rail extension couldn't be justified).

(Tyne and Wear attempted the same but deregulation killed that, and LT as was did a major rejig of bus routes to coincide with the opening of Walthamstow Victoria Line.)

 

[philg999]

i guess he means countries where they have transit hubs (at usually rail stations) on the outskirts of cities and where you have to change to a tram/metro/local bus to get into the city centre?

 

[johncrossley]

Can't quite understand your point, do you have an example in mind?

For example, Zurich. I have cut out a small part of the map and marked some of the stops which don't have a direct service to the city centre. In a comparable UK town, they would have direct buses to the centre. But routes 80 and 89, for example can be used to go around the west of the city which probably wouldn't exist in a UK town.

https://www.zvv.ch/zvv-assets/fahrplan/pdf/stadt-zuerich-13er.pdf

 

[The exile]

Once a city reaches a certain size, this makes a lot of sense - particularly if it has got a transport option that iis frequent and immune from road congestion. The attraction of a through bus to the city centre soon wanes if it will take you 40 minutes at best compared to 10 minutes on a metro with integrated ticketing. Saves on buses and drivers as well. Very few British cities have the infrastructure to make this truly viable.

 

[johncrossley]

Once a city reaches a certain size, this makes a lot of sense - particularly if it has got a transport option that iis frequent and immune from road congestion. The attraction of a through bus to the city centre soon wanes if it will take you 40 minutes at best compared to 10 minutes on a metro with integrated ticketing. Saves on buses and drivers as well. Very few British cities have the infrastructure to make this truly viable.

In the case of Zurich, however, there is no metro system, only a S-Bahn which only has a small coverage of the city. There were protests against building a metro so they have to make do with stopping buses and trams, but still require many passengers to change for the city centre. However it is often quoted as having one of the highest public transport mode shares in the world.

 

[The exile]

In the case of Zurich, however, there is no metro system, only a S-Bahn which only has a small coverage of the city. There were protests against building a metro so they have to make do with stopping buses and trams, but still require many passengers to change for the city centre. However it is often quoted as having one of the highest public transport mode shares in the world.

How much of that tram network is on virtually traffic-free routes, though? (Although I’ve visited Zuerich it wasn’t for long so I don’t know)

 

[johncrossley]

How much of that tram network is on virtually traffic-free routes, though? (Although I’ve visited Zuerich it wasn’t for long so I don’t know)

Certainly the trams enjoy a lot of priority, although I'm not sure I would go as far as "virtually traffic-free". I've just been looking at bits of trolleybus route 32 on Google Streetview which runs quite close to the centre but doesn't actually go there and the bits I've seen don't have bus lanes. Such a tangential route would generally not exist in UK towns. There is major orbital corridor route further out, where four routes go under a tunnel, which also would probably not exist in a UK town. Those two corridors are marked in red.

 

[Dr Day]

How did those European cities arrive at that network design philosophy?

I would imagine things simply evolve over time through analyses of where people are travelling, operating costs and capacity to come up with an optimised efficient network across all modes, rather than a deliberate overnight change of policy to terminate previously through routes into city centres at a transit point. Nothing that cities in GB couldn't do in a multi-modal de-regulated environment, and some like Manchester are starting to do.

Straying off-topic, but these comparisons with Europe also need to take into consideration differences in population and employment distribution (more families of all socio-economic groups live in apartments within more mixed residential/shopping/business/entertainment districts within cities, rather than commuting in from the wider hinterland). This all makes it more cost-effective to run more comprehensive public transport networks.

 

[johncrossley]

Nothing that cities in GB couldn't do in a multi-modal de-regulated environment, and some like Manchester are starting to do.

But if the bus companies want to serve the city centre on all routes, because they think they will make more money that way, they will do so under a deregulated environment. Manchester of course has now partly removed deregulation

 

[Bletchleyite]

But if the bus companies want to serve the city centre on all routes, because they think they will make more money that way, they will do so under a deregulated environment. Manchester of course has now partly removed deregulation

Bus companies will do what makes buses more profitable, though. If the same organisation operated buses and trams, they'd do what made both together more profitable, and that's almost certainly integrated feeder services, not duplication.

 

[PTR 444]

Once a city grows beyond a certain physical size, it becomes more economical to connect the centre with the outlying suburbs solely by a rail/metro option with feeder buses from the station. If you take a look at bus map of London, you’ll notice that hardly any routes serving Zone 1 stray anywhere beyond Zone 3. This is most likely down to the fact that rail/tube is a much faster and higher capacity option for longer journeys, but it does beg the question as to whether private companies would consider running direct Zone 1-Zone 6 routes if London’s buses were deregulated.

Night buses in London already extend further than the day routes, but this is mainly due to the fact that the roads are much quieter then and most tube/rail lines need to shut down for the night.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Once a city grows beyond a certain physical size, it becomes more economical to connect the centre with the outlying suburbs solely by a rail/metro option with feeder buses from the station. If you take a look at bus map of London, you’ll notice that hardly any routes serving Zone 1 stray anywhere beyond Zone 3. This is most likely down to the fact that rail/tube is a much faster and higher capacity option for longer journeys, but it does beg the question as to whether private companies would consider running direct Zone 1-Zone 6 routes if London’s buses were deregulated.

I think it's very likely that they would, because journeys of that sort of length do run in say Manchester. Though TfL does operate a lot more bus services direct to Zone 1 than many European cities do, though the usual reason given for this was that the Tube is/was overcrowded and couldn't cope with all the interchanging passengers if they were to be lopped - perhaps less the case now we have the Lizzie and a reduced commuting level.

 

[Austriantrain]

I am not sure anyone can give a comprehensive answer to your query, because it really differs locally on how a network has grown. If I take the example of my home city Vienna, that was actually larger in the 19th century than after WW1. We are just now regaining our former size. So the tram network back then was obviously very spread out with (albeit a minority) plenty of routes that did not go to the centre. When the "U-Bahn" was planned, city planners were still very anti-tram and wanted to close down the network. In order to start that, duplicate tram routes were closed and U-Bahn stations outside the center emerged as hubs. Also, whenever a tram route was closed without a parallel U-Bahn, traffic patterns were well established, so a similar bus route was introduced, and many survive to this day. The network shapes the transport patterns and these then shape network evolution... and since we thankfully were too slow to close all our tram routes before a rethink emerged, the basic structure has been stable for a very long time now, only really changing in the outskirts where lots of new housing etc was built.

 

[johncrossley]

Zurich is tiny compared to London and even (Greater) Manchester but possibly as many as half the routes in the Zurich don't go to the city centre. Bristol or Nottingham are probably more comparable to Zurich and they have very few non-city centre routes like the ones I drew on the map earlier.

 

[edwin_m]

Cities with this level of integration are very good at designing interchanges where the bus pulls up with its door on the other side of the platform, a few steps from the door of the tram.

 

[PTR 444]

I think it's very likely that they would, because journeys of that sort of length do run in say Manchester. Though TfL does operate a lot more bus services direct to Zone 1 than many European cities do, though the usual reason given for this was that the Tube is/was overcrowded and couldn't cope with all the interchanging passengers if they were to be lopped - perhaps less the case now we have the Lizzie and a reduced commuting level.

Interesting. I’m intrigued to start a new thread on this

 

[30907]

Once a city grows beyond a certain physical size, it becomes more economical to connect the centre with the outlying suburbs solely by a rail/metro option with feeder buses from the station. If you take a look at bus map of London, you’ll notice that hardly any routes serving Zone 1 stray anywhere beyond Zone 3. This is most likely down to the fact that rail/tube is a much faster and higher capacity option for longer journeys, but it does beg the question as to whether private companies would consider running direct Zone 1-Zone 6 routes if London’s buses were deregulated.

Many London routes used to be longer. Growing up in the Bromley area (Zone 4?), I remember the 47 from Bromley Common/Farnborough to Shoreditch/Stoke Newington(?).
There was also the 12 from Croydon to London via Penge, which was split (12/312) because of traffic delays, and I am sure there were other similar rejigs.

Night buses in London already extend further than the day routes, but this is mainly due to the fact that the roads are much quieter then and most tube/rail lines need to shut down for the night.

 

[philg999]

Amsterdam has become quite extreme in this regards recently. Despite being a relatively small place in global terms, shortly there will be almost no regional bus lines left which go inside the outer city ring, apart from a couple of exceptions useful for tourists (to volendam, Zaans Schans and Schiphol airport). You’ll need to travel to bus stations on the far north, south, south-east or west of the city to find the regional buses. And inside the inner ring there are no buses at all, just trams and the metro. I believe the idea is to stop regional buses from getting snarled up in traffic, to stop income from being abstracted from the city transport company to the private regional bus lines, and also within the city they are making sure there are very few duplications over routes served by metro, tram or bus (if they spent billions building a metro then they want you to use that instead of a tram). Luckily everything runs to a high frequency so the many changes don’t slow you down that much, but it is quite annoying to try to use public transport in the city - it’s not possible to read a paper and relax for your journey.

 

[DanielB]

Amsterdam has become quite extreme in this regards recently. Despite being a relatively small place in global terms, shortly there will be almost no regional bus lines left which go inside the outer city ring, apart from a couple of exceptions useful for tourists

This is a temporary situation however: due to road works the regional buses temporarily can't reach the central station and will run to Noord metro station. But quite a lot of routes, not only the ones for tourists, will return to central station later.

In the Netherlands the networks that are operational really depend on the infrastructure. Rotterdam has its Zuidplein hub for many years now, with all regional buses terminating there and some local services which link up metro and train stations in the outskirts of town. Amsterdam in contrast has more regional public transport near the city centre (with interchanges at Amstel station and Elandsgracht bus station relatively close to the city centre and only Noord being located a bit further away).
But the contrast with Utrecht is huge, as that city has no metro and just a few tram routes. You'll immediately see the difference: Utrecht has 14 bus routes through the city centre and 32 bus routes calling at the central station (making it the busiest bus station in the Netherlands, which AFAIK is also served by the most operators.

The Hague, also being a city with no metro, has many regional services at its central station still. However these all go into the same direction in general, as with the introduction of RandstadRail the network was reconstructed and routes from the southwest are now terminating at Leyenburg interchange.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Hague, also being a city with no metro, has many regional services at its central station still. However these all go into the same direction in general, as with the introduction of RandstadRail the network was reconstructed and routes from the southwest are now terminating at Leyenburg interchange.

However Den Haag has an extremely comprehensive tram network and almost no city bus routes - the few that do exist are to plug some gaps in it, and any other demand, as you might expect, goes by bicycle.

 

[johncrossley]

Amsterdam has become quite extreme in this regards recently. Despite being a relatively small place in global terms, shortly there will be almost no regional bus lines left which go inside the outer city ring, apart from a couple of exceptions useful for tourists (to volendam, Zaans Schans and Schiphol airport). You’ll need to travel to bus stations on the far north, south, south-east or west of the city to find the regional buses. And inside the inner ring there are no buses at all, just trams and the metro. I believe the idea is to stop regional buses from getting snarled up in traffic, to stop income from being abstracted from the city transport company to the private regional bus lines, and also within the city they are making sure there are very few duplications over routes served by metro, tram or bus (if they spent billions building a metro then they want you to use that instead of a tram). Luckily everything runs to a high frequency so the many changes don’t slow you down that much, but it is quite annoying to try to use public transport in the city - it’s not possible to read a paper and relax for your journey.

Zurich is considerably smaller than Amsterdam but you can see from the map linked above that regional buses don't go anywhere near the centre. The nearest they get is Bellevue stop which is 1.4 km from the central station. There is just one city bus route to the central station.

 

[DanielB]

However Den Haag has an extremely comprehensive tram network and almost no city bus routes - the few that do exist are to plug some gaps in it, and any other demand, as you might expect, goes by bicycle.

The Hague might however be the best comparison to the before mentioned Zürich in size, it's only slightly bigger in number of inhabitants (402000 in Zürich vs 514000 for the Hague), though the limited number of local bus routes do almost all pass through the city centre. Two orbital lines are the only exception.

The different setup of the network in Zürich might well have to do with the height differences in the city, providing a natural barrier for trough bus routes?

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

However Den Haag has an extremely comprehensive tram network and almost no city bus routes - the few that do exist are to plug some gaps in it, and any other demand, as you might expect, goes by bicycle.

I suggest you look at https://assets.htm.nl/2022-6-20_Lijnennetkaart_Bus.pdf and rethink that statement. Nine routes looks like rather more than "almost no city bus routes" and only two are genuinely orbital (the outer Duindorp section of the 22 used to be part of the 23). Yes trams are more widespread but Den Haag would be a terrible place to live without its buses!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I suggest you look at https://assets.htm.nl/2022-6-20_Lijnennetkaart_Bus.pdf and rethink that statement. Nine routes looks like rather more than "almost no city bus routes" and only two are genuinely orbital (the outer Duindorp section of the 22 used to be part of the 23). Yes trams are more widespread but Den Haag would be a terrible place to live without its buses!

It's a bit more comprehensive than I recall it being when I frequented Den Haag around 2007, to be fair, but the coverage of the trams is so comprehensive that I wouldn't say it would be terrible without the buses, bar the regional ones.

It's certainly the reverse of most places, though, with far more tram coverage than bus.

I wonder if they have perhaps increased bus coverage a bit due to some tram routes still using the GTL high floor trams that are no use to wheelchair users or anyone else who can't climb steep steps.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

It's a bit more comprehensive than I recall it being when I frequented Den Haag around 2007, to be fair, but the coverage of the trams is so comprehensive that I wouldn't say it would be terrible without the buses, bar the regional ones.

It's certainly the reverse of most places, though, with far more tram coverage than bus.

I wonder if they have perhaps increased bus coverage a bit due to some tram routes still using the GTL high floor trams that are no use to wheelchair users or anyone else who can't climb steep steps.

It's many years since I lived there but the bus network, at least within the city, doesn't seem to have changed very much. Most of the changes are tramline extensions, the city-centre tram-tunnel and of course the hugely impactful Randstadrail scheme.

The obvious lesson is that a holistic approach to transport planning, which includes close co-operation with policy on land use generally, is the most beneficial way forward. The modal share within the public transport network can easily vary between different locations and new tramways are more expensive than additional bus routes. So the optimum solution will vary between places (and over time of course). Perhaps the most important point is to seek continuous improvement, a mantra often adopted by commercial enterprises but all too often lacking among UK transport operators.

 

[snowleopard]

Zurich is considerably smaller than Amsterdam but you can see from the map linked above that regional buses don't go anywhere near the centre. The nearest they get is Bellevue stop which is 1.4 km from the central station. There is just one city bus route to the central station.

As someone who spent the first 16 years of his life or so in Zurich: "Bellevue" is very much what people in Zurich would consider part of the centre. It may be in one corner (roughly South East) of the centre, and the central station is in another corner (roughly North West) - but you also wouldn't say that a bus in London doesn't go "anywhere near the centre" because it stops at, say, Trafalgar Square and doesn't go on to King's Cross.
Zurich's main station - which is a more apt translation than central station anyway - is not really a good reference point for being the "centre" (speaking in terms of where people want to be as opposed to strictly geographic terms).

Zurich is fairly multi-nodal/multi-centred as cities of its size go, e.g. for many people, the "Stadelhofen" train station or the "Hardbrücke" train station are just as central for their needs as the main station. This is not comparable to buses stopping at a regional hub somewhere miles out of the city centre à la (apparently) Amsterdam.

I know the regional buses which you refer to, which stop at Bellevue, quite well as I used to take them as a high school student daily - they come in from the the right/Eastern shore of Lake Zurich, and would be totally lost in traffic if they kept going to the main station. Anyone who wants to go to the main station for a connecting train would be much better of taking the S-Bahn, either from their village or from the Tiefenbrunnen interchange. Anyone who wants to go those parts of the centre nearer the main station would be much quicker by either doing the same or, if more convenient for them, take the bus to Bellevue and then a tram onwards which is less bothered by traffic.
Generally, road-based traffic around Zurich central station is a pain at the best of times. It makes fairly little sense to send buses there except for the handful of urban buses (31, 46 from memory) that have to go past it anyway. You're much better off on a tram once you're inside the core.

 

[DanielB]

It's many years since I lived there but the bus network, at least within the city, doesn't seem to have changed very much. Most of the changes are tramline extensions, the city-centre tram-tunnel and of course the hugely impactful Randstadrail scheme.

You're right, the bus network is almost the same for many years already. Only the 23 no longer going to Kijkduin at some times of the day is a more recent change.

I wonder if they have perhaps increased bus coverage a bit due to some tram routes still using the GTL high floor trams that are no use to wheelchair users or anyone else who can't climb steep steps.

There's actually little parallel operation between buses and GTL operated tram routes, or actually any tram route. They'd only share a short parallel section, mostly in or around the city centre.
So that's not very likely, also as bus coverage hasn't changed a lot for many years.

 

[Route115?]

There are essential two ways to design a system, random connections and planned connections. With a very high frequency network such as the underground in zone 1 the first is clearly the way to go. With lower frequencies the latter makes sense, but for rail it may require additional infrastructure which can be expensive. Switzerland is the master of the latter. Not only are major rail stations built around banks (stand on the end of Zurich Hbf to get an idea) but buses will be waiting for trains at suburban stations in the Zurich S bahn and throughout the Swiss network. It can work elsewhere, National Express has one at Cheltenham for many years and in 1984 the buses in Orlando Florida worked on that basis (they may still do so). It all comes down to planning. In the UK under Thatcherism sensible planning was seen as anti-competive - look at the Tyne & Wear network - (fortunately things have slowly got better). Some European cities have been good at central planning which obviously requires a planning authority and ideally integrated ticketing.

 

[John-H]

Isn't the first step an integrated ticket system? When you have different fares for different routes, there will be those who take the "cheaper" route, even if it is slower, and also more costly to operate, since passengers spend more time on board.