Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Yesterday was one of this blog's 20 busiest days, not because everyone's really interested in National Trust properties but because an old post hit an international news aggregator. My post about Crossrail timewasting ended up on hckr news under the headline "25% of the 13 minute journey from Whitechapel to Paddington is spent not moving", and an extra 3000 people turned up to read it.
They also left comments, the first of which was "It's hard not to think Londoners are entitled and ungrateful", so the conversation immediately spun off into a tangential debate about regional entitlement. But some people said relevant things, timings-wise, including...
» The percentage alone doesn't tell much, without knowing what's the value for regular routes.
» Travelling by scooter in London, about half the time is spent waiting for traffic lights.
» Although the tube sounds really fast, even with the lengthy dwell times, a bicycle is a far better option.
Which got me thinking, what percentage of a journey is spent not moving when using other travel modes?
Thankfully Whitechapel to Paddington is a good route to test this out.
I took my stopwatch on the Hammersmith and City line on a journey from Paddington to Whitechapel. I timed the overall journey and also how much time the train spent waiting at each station. I then compared this to my previous Crossrail data.
| | Hammersmith & City | Crossrail |
| Length of journey | 26m 13s | 13m 10s |
| Number of intermediate stations | 10 | 4 |
| Time spent at intermediate stations | 25s 55s 21s 26s 27s 20s 20s 20s 23s 54s | 56s 54s 57s 45s |
| Time spent waiting outside Aldgate East | 1m 30s | - |
| Total time spent not moving | 6m 21s | 3m 32s |
| % of time spent not moving | 24% | 26% |
These are incredibly similar percentages overall. Even though a tube journey takes twice as long, the time spent not moving is still about 25%. But a typical dwell time at a tube station is 20-30 seconds whereas on Crossrail it's 50-60 seconds, twice as much, which is why Crossrail feels so dawdly.
And then I took my stopwatch on the bus. Route 205 goes from Whitechapel to Paddington so I rode that all the way and timed every wait at a bus stop, every wait at traffic lights and every wait at a pedestrian crossing. And my word, buses stop a lot.
| | 205 bus |
| Length of journey | 1h 4m |
| Number of stops | 36 |
| Time spent at bus stops | 8s 22s 18s 13s 7s 38s 20s 23s 80s 20s 15s 17s 28s 22s 20s 20s 25s 25s 30s 12s 10s 18s 13s 20s 17s 15s 15s 20s = 9m 52s |
| Time spent at traffic lights | 40s 13s 20s 13s 16s 13s 5s 45s 2s 38s 36s 10s 17s 10s 28s 28s 30s 180s 40s 52s 53s 45s 110s 30s 115s 10s 25s 15s 40s 28s 30s 25s 10s 25s = 19m 57s |
| Time spent regulating the service | 2m 50s |
| Total time spent not moving | 32m 39s |
| % of time spent not moving | 51% |
Traffic was fairly light, except around King's Cross, so these shouldn't be extreme figures. Altogether the bus stopped 62 times! That said we also passed through 40 sets of lights on green, so maybe we got lucky.
This time about 50% of the journey was spent not moving, hugely higher than travelling by train. It's kind of amazing that buses in central London get anywhere at all but they do, just not very fast.
I'd also timed the 205 bus on its speedier journey from Bow to Whitechapel - a more typical inner suburban bus journey - and that spent 26% of its time not moving. Roughly 25% again... it's a popular percentage.
I don't have a bike so I didn't try cycling from Whitechapel to Paddington, plus it's a really bad idea to use a stopwatch repeatedly while negotiating a red route. But I can now do you a quick summary of rail, tube and bus, roughly speaking.
Whitechapel to Paddington
Crossrail: 25% of the 13 minute journey is spent not moving
H&C tube: 25% of the 26 minute journey is spent not moving
205 bus: 50% of the 64 minute journey is spent not moving
Perhaps focus on how long your journey takes, not how much it dawdles on the way.
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