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Whilst blasting around Berlin today I was faced with a bit of a dilemma. I had one change which could be accomplished in two ways in exactly the same amount of time:

1) Double back one station, change to overground, two overground stops
2) Direct bus

I made the wrong choice (bus) and lost about 10mins owing to the bus not turning up.

Seeing as trains are generally more reliable, I was wondering:

How much time would you have to save by going by bus to choose it out of a train/bus choice?

How far was the running distance would be my next question u can always rely on ur feet.?

palkanetoijala31 wrote:How far was the running distance would be my next question u can always rely on ur feet.?

About 2.5mi. Maybe well within your reach, but not mine!

The "bus" issue if often somewhat of a dillema in R15's when you have odd stations that you can either link up or double back on the tube. We had one during the tube Olympics which was Kentish Town and Holloway Road.. Tricky little decisions

Yes on that R15 I decided to look for a bus between Holloway Road and Kentish Town (I know somebody else ran this one, but I wasn't about to run it - it looked too far to run for me). I left Holloway Road looking for a bus to take me to Kentish Town, waited a few minutes but saw no buses, so I decided to double back on the Tube.

On a full network, the best thing to do is to go and research these things. I've been spending many a morning out on the network testing out different parts to see what is best

uefacup81 wrote:How much time would you have to save by going by bus to choose it out of a train/bus choice?

Your mileage may vary (literally), but it's almost always best not to switch transport modes unless the gains are obvious, such as High Barnet - Cockfosters. Try not to switch levels, even. Going from deep-level tube to surface transport? That's a lot of running up/down escalators...

Wanstead wrote:

uefacup81 wrote:How much time would you have to save by going by bus to choose it out of a train/bus choice?

Your mileage may vary (literally), but it's almost always best not to switch transport modes unless the gains are obvious, such as High Barnet - Cockfosters. Try not to switch levels, even. Going from deep-level tube to surface transport? That's a lot of running up/down escalators...

That's the joy of the Berlin system though - changes are almost always very short distance.

All the stations are sub-surface with about 20 steps between platform and street and no ticket barriers.

99% of changes are cross-platform, and inter-line changes are often just a matter of about 10m...

It certainly makes a change from London!

uefacup81 wrote:It certainly makes a change from London!

Sounds like a breeze. Are you setting an inaugural time for Berlin then?

Wanstead wrote:

uefacup81 wrote:It certainly makes a change from London!

Sounds like a breeze. Are you setting an inaugural time for Berlin then?

I had a crack at it yesterday (here)

I wasn't the first to have a go though!

JoeGJ1984 wrote:I left Holloway Road looking for a bus to take me to Kentish Town, waited a few minutes but saw no buses, so I decided to double back on the Tube.

The trouble is that the longer you wait, the higher the probability of a bus coming in the next minute or so. So sticking with a decision does often pay dividends.

I went to Kentish Town first and looked at the map on the bus stop for buses to Holloway Road and there weren't any on the map! Even in the alphabetised list of destinations it wasn't listed, so I assumed there weren't any.

It seems that there is one, but I'm quite surprised it wasn't shown.

My plan was to run it, grabbing a bus if one came along. One arrived at Caledonian Road, just as I was heading down to double back Holloway Road.