THE MULTIPLE BUS QUESTION

Ever since the first horse-drawn omnibus took to the streets of London in 1829, the question of bus timing has troubled mathematicians and passengers alike. Heavy traffic, coupled with the tendency for passengers to clamber onto the first bus that comes along, tends to make buses cluster in threes, even when they leave the depot at different times. For a full treatment of this perplexing problem, see the book Why do Buses Comes in Threes by Rob Eastway and Jeremy Wyndham (Robson Books Ltd, 1999).

A Routemaster moquette (durable upholstery).

THE BUS PACKING PROBLEM

A more pressing question for the makers of this site concerns the mathematics of packing buses into buildings. Take the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, for example. To calculate the number of Routemasters that would fit into this cathedral, we could simply divide the volume of the dome by the volume of the bus. But this is an approximation. It fails to account for the curvature of the dome's walls. Inserted whole, cuboid buses packed into a dome would leave a large amount of excess empty space. Only a full analysis of the problem using non-Eucleadian geometry - including a foray into hyperbolic space - could help us to optimise bus packing in such a situation. In the meantime, the authors of this site have decided to leave such questions out. We have also decided to ignore the question of whether the buses would fit through the door.

THE RML DISTINCTION

Throughout this site, we have attempted to be consistent in our approach to the RML (long Routemaster), a variant of the classic bus that has one extra, narrow window and an extra row of seats. Keen-eyed readers may have spotted references to the RML throughout this site. We have endeavoured to make the distinctions between RML and original Routemaster explicit wherever possible, for the sake of accuracy and clarity.