Mastering London's bus system... not so much

While the Underground (tube) system in London is very easy to figure out, the same cannot be said of the bus system.

I was highly motivated to ride the busses because there were times when I just needed to sit down, and the Underground trains were almost always standing-room only. Besides that, using the tube is great for speed, but it's like popping in and out of worm-holes, which leaves you with no context for how you got from here to there.

London's zones
Yet another reason: My 7-day Travelcard was only good for zones 1-2. That's enough to see most of London, but the Olympic Park was much further out. Even so, bus transporation was covered.

Even Rick Steves' London 2012, which is an excellent guidebook in most respects, did not adequately explain the bus system, implying that a map could be found easily and that a sight-seer could figure out how to get to the desired destination simply by learning to decipher the signage at the bus stop.

Neither of those proved to be the case, though the guidebook still provided a great deal of helpful information about London bus travel.

The locals try to be helpful, but...
Asking the locals isn't much of a solution either because Londoners, I concluded, do not know how to use their bus system. They only know their own familiar routes. Twice, I was given wrong information by people who really did want to help me. From time-to-time, I would ask a passerby or a patron at The Volunteer if s/he could explain to me how to use the London bus system. To my frustration, the answer was always the same: "Where do you want to go?", usually followed by incorrect information. All of this may just be owing to the nature of city bus travel, rather than bus travel in London, in particular.

My bus-system savvy didn't improve much even after I managed to get hold of a map from a manager at one of the tube stations. Even then, the maps were not out for the public. I asked, and he kindly retrieved one from his office.

A smartphone is the solution
Yet there are solutions... the optimum one being a smartphone that works in London. (Here's a column about that). Once you know where you want to go, all you need to do is plug the coordinates into the travel planner at tfl.gov.uk/Journeyplanner. That's what my friends Patty and Deigo did, and they had no trouble making bus-travel decisions on-the-fly.

I, on the other hand, had a laptop with a slow internet connection in a hotel room that was three flights up. Not all that convenient if you want to stay flexible about where you go next. However, by phone, I managed to reach a woman in some city office, and she actually told me that I was free to call her personally if I was out and about and needed to know where to make a connection.

Now that's hospitality -- and I have to say that I found no shortage of it during my six days in London.

For anyone who is actually interested in learning more about the London bus system, I can tell you that the bus stops are usually paired and near one another. The route is the same, but the busses go in opposite directions -- and it's very easy to get on the wrong one. What actually happens is that, when a bus gets to the end of its route, it turns around and goes in the other direction.

So, the London bus system won the first round -- but there will be a rematch if I have the good fortunate to visit this marvelous city again.