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.
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.
