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In Defence of Bendy Buses...and more

Above: A modern replacement for the Routemaster? (see below)

In defence of bendy buses

According to today's Evening Standard, Boris Johnson vowed today that if he was elected Mayor of London, his first act would be to scrap bendy buses and replace them with a modern day Routemaster.

Bendy buses come in for a lot of criticism, and as a passenger on bendy buses for the last few years I feel moved to blog in their defence.

I think the greatest benefit of them is that they can deal with large numbers of people very quickly, and they do get you there faster.

The three sets of doors, and the ticketing, mean that people can get on and off extremely quickly. Anyone who doubts this should go down to London's Waterloo station at morning rush hour and watch the crowds streaming out of the station and on to the route 521 bendy bus. (The stream of people organizes itself into three queues, one for each set of doors at the bus stop. Buses arrive every few minutes, and the queues move forward much more quickly than they would otherwise).

I like the fact that bendy buses have plenty of room inside. There is room to walk around at non-peak times, and they almost feel more like a train than a bus.

Because of their size, they also tend to be driven more smoothly and much less aggressively than other buses, making the journey more comfortable and safe.

The approach to ticketing is controversial - you need to buy a ticket before you board, which is a hassle if you're in a rush and the ticket machine is broken. However, this is a policy issue which has nothing to do with the design of the bus. There are many other types of bus for which you need to buy a ticket in advance. And equally, if they wanted to they could easily introduce a conductor on the bendy bus who could check tickets and accept cash fares, just like the old Routemasters.

The question about cyclist safety is a serious one. Bendy buses (and any other long vehicles such as articulated lorries) obviously need to be sensible when overtaking cyclists, and shouldn't do it on a left-hand bend or corner.

In general though, all road users have to take responsibility for safety and I think the attitude of the drivers and riders is a much more important safety factor than the buses being slightly longer. It's worth pointing out that hundreds of cyclists act recklessly every day, while I've hardly ever seen a bus driving dangerously.

Yes, bendy buses have fewer seats and more standing room, but that's because it's an urban mass transit system - it's designed to move very large numbers of people relatively short distances, with lots of people getting on and off quickly.

So basically I don't mind bendy buses at all, and actually quite like them.

A new Routemaster?

Having said all that, the most interesting part of Boris Johnson's suggestion was the opportunity to create a replacement for the Routemaster - a new type of bus unique to London, which could once again become part of the city's identity.

We had a go at modernizing the form of the Routemaster (pls see image above) by making it slightly bigger and slightly more blobby and streamlined. Two points to make here:

1. Tickets. The driver can't sell tickets to people getting on. So either people will need to buy a ticket before getting on (like the bendy buses), or there will need to be a conductor (like the old Routemasters).
2. The Door. Many Londoners remember the adrenalin rush of running and leaping on to the rear platform just in time before the bus left, or jumping on and off in traffic. This was great fun, but extremely dangerous, and in the 21st century we felt we had to draw a sliding door at the back, which would open at bus stops only.

If London does build its own new bus type, should the new design try to emulate the shape of the Routemaster?

Perhaps not. The original was strikingly modern when first produced, and acquired its character over many decades as a backdrop to people's lives.

I feel there's a strong argument that the best vehicle designers in the country should produce something completely new and extraordinary - efficient, accessible, safe and fit for purpose but also unexpected, unique and distinctive.

8 Quick Tips for Urban Design Sketching

Introduction

Although at our company we spend most of our time creating computer modelling tools, freehand sketching is still an invaluable method of communicating ideas for urban design schemes.

Practice is obviously the most important thing when learning how to draw urban design sketches, but there are also many little 'tricks', techniques and 'things to know' which can help achieve more convincing drawings. We've summarized a few here:

Tip #1: Wobbly Lines

When drawing black and white sketches, it doesn't matter if the lines you draw aren't smooth - they can be 'wobbly' as the eye will tend to average out the line.

The most important thing is to get the start and end in the right place, and make sure than on average the line is heading in the right direction. If we concentrate too hard on making the line smooth and straight, it's easy for the line to end up in the wrong place.

When learning to do this, it can help to keep your hand completely off the paper and to draw the line fairly quickly. This can seem counter-intuitive at first (as we are used to writing carefully with the wrist on the paper) but it helps avoid rotation errors where the line becomes slightly curved.

Pls see the diagram below. It doesn't matter if the line is slightly wobbly, but it does look wrong if it ends up the wrong place. On the right, this describes a common problem - if the wrist is held on the page, then the hand will tend to rotate, and cause the line to curve.

Tip #2: Always Use Perspective Lines

Even for very quick sketches, it is always worth using vanishing points and perspective lines.

When starting out, it can be useful to lightly draw perspective lines with a pencil before going over it with a pen (and then rubbing out the pencil). They can easily add accuracy and credibility to a simple drawing.

Tip #3: Trust the Perspective Lines When Drawing

Sometimes the perspective lines don't feel instinctively right at first - in particular the angles of the tops of buildings may feel too steep. It's usually best to trust the perspective lines, and to follow them strictly until the drawing is finished. If it still looks wrong at the end, then try a different vanishing point.

Tip #4: Set the Vanishing Point at the Right Height

In most urban design sketches, the vanishing point and horizon are very low relative to the buildings (as people's eye level is low compared with most buildings).

Quite often, this doesn't feel quite right, and it's easy to accidentally draw the vanishing point a bit higher than it should be.

Also, when drawing places such as street cafes, remember that the horizon for people sitting down will be different from people standing up

Tip #5: Keep it Simple

Choose a relatively simple viewpoint to start with. Single-Point Perspectives (eg. looking straight down a street, or straight at a large building in a square) will save you a huge amount of hassle.

Don't worry about it looking too simple to begin with - it's easy to add in richness to the drawing later either by adding people/trees or adding detail to the buildings.

If the view you want is complex, or if it needs to be particularly accurate, then it may be best to create a 3D computer model, set up your view, print it out and trace over it. Google SketchUp™ is particularly useful for this.

If your view looks straight down a street, then our program Streetscape can be useful for getting the proportions right to start with.

Tip #6: Keep Practising Drawing Things From Life

Most people draw all the time in primary school, but then stop when becoming teenagers. However, our 'primary school drawing instinct' from those early years is very strong, and we are left with an set of mental images about how to draw certain things, such as the house below.

This primary school image of what buildings and other things look like is of course inaccurate, but lasts a long time and can subtely influence everything we draw. Drawing things from life helps to correct this instinct and replace it with an instinct for more realistic details and proportions.

Tip #7: Vehicles

Like human faces, modern cars are extremely complex 3D shapes and are very difficult to draw convincingly.

Because we are very familiar with the shapes, the slightest inaccuracy can become very obvious in a drawing. For quick sketches, drawing cars is best avoided unless absolutely necessary.

If you have to draw them...

• Drawing cars from above is easier than drawing them from the front, back or side. As a rule of thumb, they are three times as long as they are wide. The front headlights can usually just be seen from the top, and can indicate which direction the car is going in.
• Drawing from the front or back is easier than drawing them from the side. Distinguish between fronts and backs by the position of the number plate.
• If you have to draw them from the side or from any other angle, it's normally easiest to find a photo of the car you want and then trace over it.

Buses are easier - the only thing to watch out for is the proportions. We normally see buses from an oblique angle (at a bus stop), and so when drawing them from the side there is a natural tendency to draw them too short. Modern double-decker buses are usually 2-2.5 times as long as they are high, and they can look unusually long when viewed from the side at a distance.

Tip #8: Add Crowds

It's nearly always worth taking the time to draw a large number of people in your sketch, as it can bring an urban place to life even if the buildings are very simple. If you don't want to draw people close up you can normally get away with a wide-angle view such as this one, where people are little more than a scribble.

The key points to remember when drawing crowds are:

• Use a constant horizon to set the height of all the heads.
• Vary the size of the heads and height of people to create depth.
• Allow for a little variation in height (some people are taller than others) but not too much as the perspective may start to look wrong.
• Go to busy places and look at how crowds actually behave. Many people walk on their own, but there are also plenty of people in twos, threes and larger groups.

The tips in this blog post are short-cuts to achieving certain effects but as with anything, drawings always improve with practice. Please share any other tricks you may have come across...

Technology for Liveable Cities

I'm afraid we've been neglecting this blog a bit in the last month or two. There's a good reason for this though, as our team has been working hard on developing our new city design software.

We're interested in creating holistic integrated computer models of cities, which bring together all of the different specialisms - design, planning, financial, environmental, movement and liveability.

City Design on 'The Apprentice'

A couple of weeks ago, the last episode of The Apprentice was great fun to watch for anyone involved in the design and development industry.

The two finalists were given the task of coming up with a development proposal for a large site on London's South Bank. They had to work with architects and other advisors to come up with a scheme that was viable, but also high quality architecture.

The episode captured many of the issues that come up in large scale development projects, but we were particularly interested in how the teams dealt with the relationship between the design and the numbers.

On large masterplan projects, there is always a huge amount of information to deal with - for example floor areas, numbers of units and residential densities. The designer has a problem, as every time the design is changed, all of this data needs to be re-calculated. One of the key benefits of our software is that it will solve this problem and allow the design process to flow much more quickly.

The Dangers of Using Computers in City Design

We have several things in the pipeline for the rest of 2007. We're currently testing a new version of our street design tool called 'Streetscape Pro' and hope to make this available for free on our website very soon. Please contact us if you'd like to join the beta test programme.

We're currently investigating various ways that our CityCAD holistic modelling technology can help all kinds of masterplan projects - please sign up on our website if you'd like to be kept up to date.

Looking ahead, we're interested in exploring the positive and negative aspects of the use of computers in city design, and plan to organize an event later this year to explore these ideas in more detail.

We think that despite the obvious benefits of computer use, particularly in 3D work, there are some recurring problems:

• Misleading Accuracy - computers and print-outs can often suggest that a design is finished and resolved to the nearest millimetre when in fact it's only at an early stage.
• Limits to Design Geometry - like any medium, the processes and tools that people use to draw on computers can strongly influence the design itself, particularly if the design process is subject to time pressure.
• The 'Sketch-to-Digital' Interpretation - in the early stages of a project, designs will be produced by hand using pencil and paper. The process of translating these hand-drawn sketches into a digital drawing is a critical point, where the subtelty and elegance of shapes can sometimes be lost.

Please let us know if you have any views on this - we'll probably blog about the dangers of computers in more detail, together with some ways of avoiding trouble, later this month.

3 Urban Myths about the Smart Car

Environmentally-friendly cars are all over the news this year, so we thought we'd blog about a small car.

Smart Car Myth #1 - They run on electricity

FALSE - Most smart cars aren't electric. Although they do run on petrol, they use much less than other cars as the engine is small.

Smart Car Myth #2 - Two of them can park in the same parking space

TRUE - The picture below shows a rare sighting in London of two smart cars next to each other (this is supposed to bring good luck). They are short enough that two of them can just fit in a normal UK parking space, although if the cars on either side park too close, then they can be easily trapped.

Smart Car Myth #3 - They can park at 90 degrees to the kerb

FALSE - Normally, they are very slightly too long to park like this, and the picture below shows a smart car projecting very slighty over the line.