#Tubestrike tips for London

For those not working from home and trying to navigate across London here are some useful tips from a fellow Londoner :)

Good luck!

Citymapper
Best known as a phone app it's also a website so you can plot routes beforehand and play around with it https://citymapper.com/london and see also their How to Survive the August 5-6th Tube Strike advice which tells you about the adjustments the app's made to discount non-functioning tube bits and highlights the cycle hire system as a Plan B.

The (open) data comes from TfL who of course have their own Journeyplanner https://tfl.gov.uk/

Google Street view
If your journey involves walking in unfamiliar bits you can rehearse the journey by using Google Streetview - that's where they've driven around London and photographed everything and then knitted it all together to form a 3D view of London.

Go to Oxford Street, wait for the page to load and spot the little person icon in the bottom right. Click and drag it onto one of the roads paying careful attention to the little green circle below it, that's what you're lining up with the road you're interested in. Drop the little person and see what they see, you can then walk through the roads online.

Find a bus
All bus stops in London have a 5 digit code which can be appended to the following unfinished address to bring up the Countdown page to tell you when your bus is due.
Web: http://countdown.tfl.gov.uk/#|searchTerm=
Web example: http://countdown.tfl.gov.uk/#|searchTerm=50082
Mobile: http://m.countdown.tfl.gov.uk/arrivals/
Mobile example: http://m.countdown.tfl.gov.uk/arrivals/50082

Rail departure boards
Find out what your nearest railway station's three letter code is (eg Blackheath is BKH) and add it to the end of this unfinished web address to see when the next train is - works for all UK rail stations, not just London! http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/

• Example - Blackheath: http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/BKH/
• Example - London Bridge:http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/LBG
• Example - Cannon Street: http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/CST
• Example - Charing Cross: http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/CHX/
• Example - Liverpool Street: http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/LST

Thames Clipper ferries
They'll probably be every bit as busy as everything else but if your travel involves the following places it might be worth looking into. If you have anything travelcard-like you can get ⅓ off the cost.

Find your pier

• London Bridge City Pier (London Bridge Walk, London SE1 3UD)
• Chelsea Harbour Pier (SW10 OXD)
• Waterloo: London Eye Pier (Westminster Bridge Road, City of London SE1 7PB)
• Embankment Pier (Victoria Embankment, London WC2N 6NU)
• Blackfriars Pier (Victoria Embankment, City, London EC4V 3QR)
• Bankside Pier (Bankside, London SE1 9DT)
• Tower Millennium Pier (Lower Thames Street, London EC3N 4DT)
• Canary Wharf Pier (Docklands, London E14 8RR)
• Surrey Quays: Greenland Pier (South Sea Street, London SE16 7TE)
• Greenwich Pier (Greenwich Promenade, Greenwich, London SE10 3QT)
• North Greenwich Pier (Peninsula Square, Greenwich, London SE10 0PE)
• Woolwich: Royal Arsenal Woolwich Pier (Royal Arsenal Woolwich, Woolwich, London SE18 6TL)
• Millbank Pier (Millbank, Westminster, London SW1P 4QP)
• Putney Pier (SW15 1JW)
• Wandsworth Riverside Quarter Pier (SW18 1LP)
• St George Wharf Pier (Riverside Walk SW8 2LE)
• Chelsea: Cadogan Pier (Chelsea Embankment, London SW3 5RQ)
• Isle of Dogs: Masthouse Terrace Pier (Napier Avenue, Isle of Dogs, London E14 3QB)
• Hilton Docklands Riverside (265 Rotherhithe Street, London SE16 5HW)

My brilliant idea to improve the buttons you press to get off a bus

1. The "I want to alight at the next bus stop please" buttons on buses should be capable of lighting up when one is pressed (in case people can't easily see the lit up "Stopping" sign at the front and middle of the bus, from where they're sitting or standing).

2. Once a button has been pressed then the button sounds should be silenced until the bus has moved from the stop. It's pretty annoying when people keep pressing the button and it beeps, it seems redundant, particularly if it can be made clear to everyone (by being lit up) that the bus will stop at the next bus stop.

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Supplemental for @mariawolters who asked about the various beeps etc on buses

Button press 'dings'
London buses do seem to vary in how much noise they make, and probably most of it is for the benefit of visually impaired people. Whenever someone presses the button to get off the action of pressing makes a 'ding' sound. But if someone else presses another / same button on the bus, as often happens when lots of people are getting off at the same stop, then each button press 'dings' too. Sometimes when people are impatient they repeatedly press the button to indicate their annoyance - fortunately not too often.

My argument is that this 'ding' need only happen once, as once the button's been pressed the driver is going to stop the bus at the next stop and further button-pressing is redundant. There's a bit sign that lights up at the front of the bus to say it's stopping, and there's usually another one halfway along the bus, and I think there's one on the upper floor too. If the buttons themselves were able to light up once pressed (how difficult would it be?) then everyone could see that the bus was stopping.

Door closing warning
The next noise that the bus makes is when the doors are about to close. I've not heard this sound for a while so either I've acclimatised or enough people complained - it was a needlessly unpleasant sound, warning people that it's too late to get off. I can see that it's important for people who can't see to be kept informed of the doors' activities but it could have been a lot more pleasant.

GPS voice alerts
Finally, many buses - not all - are equipped with a GPS-voice alert system that tells you when you're coming up to a particular bit of London, eg the buses going along Hampstead Road towards Camden say something like "Drummond Road" when you're near that stop. Quite often they say the number of the bus and its destination too. I don't mind this at all, in fact I find it really useful. I quite often hop on one of several buses which are going more or less in my direction - I can't be the only Londoner to forget precisely which bus I'm on ;)