Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Industrial inaction, surely?
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Busways 'would cut rail fares by 40%' says right-wing think-tank
- Thread starter muddythefish
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Industrial inaction, surely?
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JamesRowden
Established Member
I think that 100m articulated trolleybuses with a cab at each end might actually be a good idea if we banned other vehicles from using streets that are so busy that they require such things. You could have doors along every 8m of the bus allowing fast boarding/dis-boarding. In busy city centres you could effectively get new accessible 12tbph metro lines by just adding the overhead power, 100m long bus stops and the traffic light control system required to intelligently maximise the traffic flow of 100m long vehicles. Cycles lanes would be along the middle of the road rather than the edges.
I think that such a trolleybus would only require 3 members of staff. The first being a driver and the other two being a conductor for each deck to check tickets.
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Thinking about about it again, maybe 100m is too long.
Busway replacement of rail lines could work for some rural branch lines which don't justify a train any more than once or twice an hour.
The advantage would be that the frequency could be increased (increasing patronage compared to the trains) and the number of changes reduced if they operated as hybrid services running on normal roads beyond the end of the former rail route, i.e. people would change from a mainline train to a bus instead of from mainline train to branch line train to local bus.
The idea of using them to replace commuter rail routes or regional services is of course ridiculous.
The only time busways are appropriate in busy commuter service is where the topography is too steep for a steel/steel adhesion railway. I live in one such place where using part of the rail corridor for a busway with the remainder of the busway on a new alignment taking a shortcut would allow a better service. I can pedal even my aluminium commuter bike up this hill faster than a stopping commuter train going around the hills, and on my carbon fibre racing bike I can just beat a lightweight freight train taking empty grain wagons and going non-stop.
The advantage would be that the frequency could be increased (increasing patronage compared to the trains) and the number of changes reduced if they operated as hybrid services running on normal roads beyond the end of the former rail route, i.e. people would change from a mainline train to a bus instead of from mainline train to branch line train to local bus.
The idea of using them to replace commuter rail routes or regional services is of course ridiculous.
The only time busways are appropriate in busy commuter service is where the topography is too steep for a steel/steel adhesion railway. I live in one such place where using part of the rail corridor for a busway with the remainder of the busway on a new alignment taking a shortcut would allow a better service. I can pedal even my aluminium commuter bike up this hill faster than a stopping commuter train going around the hills, and on my carbon fibre racing bike I can just beat a lightweight freight train taking empty grain wagons and going non-stop.
PermitToTravel
Established Member
That looks like a really fun commute
It is - more so in the morning than the evening of course! It has its rewards - such as being fit enough to handle a ride through the hills with Team Sky and Trek Factory Racing on the way back to the city after Stage 4 of the Tour Down Under a couple of weeks ago.That looks like a really fun commute
On weekdays I normally ride the 'new' Belair Road just to the west with the switchbacks (a climb which featured on Stage 2 of the TDU this year) because of the lighter traffic and smaller speed differentials, but the added distance means I'm not able to beat a train up the hill on that route unless something goes wrong for them (or it's a heavily loaded steel train). The other option (which I avoid) is a bike path with a 20% (1 in 5) grade where the council saved a small amount of money by simply sealing over the existing fire track instead of building the path with the originally intended switchbacks to reduce the gradient.
The 'new' Belair Road and the rail line was the subject of a contest in the 1980s - complete with poor continuity in the editing of the video as seems customary with videos about trains!
[youtube]mKhPzc_iItg[/youtube]
The Belair line trains are quite popular with the local mountain biking community. They will get a daily ticket and use the hourly trains like a ski lift for their downhill bikes all day on a Saturday. Beating the train up the hill is the only sure way for a road cyclist like me to win their respect
The only thing stopping a busway conversion of the Belair Line is the fact that it's a single track route sharing its corridor with the single track Adelaide-Melbourne standard gauge line which was broad gauge until 20 years ago, where every other line on the broad gauge commuter network is a double track route. Were the freight line to find another route (unlikely, thank goodness) the conversion could go ahead.
A word in defence of the rail line though - it's a spectacularly beautiful trip through the hills and the DEMUs in service handle the tough 2.3% (1 in 45) gradient quite nicely. While a busway would be faster - and we have experience with that, the Adelaide O-Bahn was the world's longest guided busway for over 25 years until overtaken by Cambridgeshire - I would miss the beautiful trip through the southern section of the route between Lynton and Blackwood.
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PermitToTravel
Established Member
We'd be better off sorting out our cost issues with regard to rolling sock etc and increasing the frequency of the trains on such routes than attempting a modal switch.
Where we bite the bullet and actually improve the train service, it usually proves to be very popular.
MidlandMainlie
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Funnily enough the second I read the title of this thread I knew it would be the crank tank IEA and Richard Wellings :roll: Nothing new here.
krus_aragon
Established Member
Busaholic
Veteran Member
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I'd like to see that going past Dawlish with a SSW blowing.
Could cause a reverse tsunami.
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tbtc
Veteran Member
Whilst theres a case in some parts of the country, Im amazed that any proponent of guided busways would suggest commuter routes into central London. Theres certainly a role for guided busways (Im not so blinkered that I assume that heavy rail is the answer to every problem), but heavy rail is the clear winner on that market.
For a start, youre never going to be able to replace a heavily loaded twelve coach train with an equivalent number of seats on a bus think of the logistics of hundreds of buses chasing each other along a busway several times a minute - e.g. if you assume that a double decker bus has around seventy five seats which is essentially as many as a single railway carriage though the commuter layout on modern units means that they can accommodate maybe a hundred passengers, maybe more, so a twelve coach train every five minutes at rush hour might need to be replaced by fifteen double deckers (maybe twenty is theres no standing?) in the same five minute window.
Logically, how do you park all of those buses in central London and get them back out again?
How do you deal with safe breaking distances (when theres a fast bus every twenty seconds at rush hour)?
How do you get all of those people off as quickly as the two wide doors on each train carriage?
Whilst railway staff arent cheap, replacing one driver and one conductor with twenty bus drivers is a false economy!
How do you deal with the fuel bills, given that fifteen/twenty buses will require more fuel than one EMU?
What about the pollution of putting lots more diesel buses through central London (in place of an electric train), at a time when theres a move to lower emissions?
The whole thing is a non starter.
Now, if you wanted to suggest a guided busway then there are some areas that seem good candidates.
Washington (Tyne & Wear) could be a possibility, given that its a large place not served by rail, where the spread of housing, employment and shopping would make it hard for heavy rail to penetrate most of the town.
A guided busway from Heworth (either on the path of the Leamside line or a different alignment) would allow a frequent service from Tyneside to Washington (either through services from Newcastle, or connecting with the Metro at Heworth), but then allow different routes to serve Concord/ Galleries/ Nissan/ residential areas/ retail parks etc much more effectively than one train station could.
Same goes for Northumberland where a guided busway could funnel the large amount of traffic from Blyth/ Ashington/ Bedlington/ Cramlington into Newcastle, but heavy rail wouldnt be able to serve the variety of places very easily (given how spread out the towns are, especially Cramlington).
Plus, as weve seen in Edinburgh, a successful guided busway can be upgraded to a tram route at a later stage.
This is something that those complaining about the successful guided busway in Cambridgeshire forget a heavy rail service wouldnt be able to reach the various residential areas of St Ives, nor would it serve attractions like the Hospital in Cambridge the Cambridgeshire scheme couldnt be as easily served by the bluntness of heavy rail.
However, if you are talking commuter routes into London then high capacity heavy rail is the clear winner if you can pack a thousand people onto a commuter train doing point to point journeys then theres nothing that beats heavy rail. BUT, thats not to say that heavy rail is always the solution for everything and that theres no role for guided buses just not the one that this Think Tank is suggesting. Trouble is, any suggestion on here that heavy rail isnt always the answer risks being accused of being a Serpel apologist...
Bit of an own goal for them to chose an example where heavy rail is the clear winner. If theyd used the example of where a guided busway may be more effective than reopening a line to heavy rail (where theres been a move to low density suburbia, office parks and out of town retail parks, meaning a station in the old town centre wouldnt be as attractive as when a line was closed in the 1960s) then they may have made a better point. But then, I suspect that this was more about getting short term press releases into the media than offering any sensible long term strategy.
For a start, youre never going to be able to replace a heavily loaded twelve coach train with an equivalent number of seats on a bus think of the logistics of hundreds of buses chasing each other along a busway several times a minute - e.g. if you assume that a double decker bus has around seventy five seats which is essentially as many as a single railway carriage though the commuter layout on modern units means that they can accommodate maybe a hundred passengers, maybe more, so a twelve coach train every five minutes at rush hour might need to be replaced by fifteen double deckers (maybe twenty is theres no standing?) in the same five minute window.
Logically, how do you park all of those buses in central London and get them back out again?
How do you deal with safe breaking distances (when theres a fast bus every twenty seconds at rush hour)?
How do you get all of those people off as quickly as the two wide doors on each train carriage?
Whilst railway staff arent cheap, replacing one driver and one conductor with twenty bus drivers is a false economy!
How do you deal with the fuel bills, given that fifteen/twenty buses will require more fuel than one EMU?
What about the pollution of putting lots more diesel buses through central London (in place of an electric train), at a time when theres a move to lower emissions?
The whole thing is a non starter.
Now, if you wanted to suggest a guided busway then there are some areas that seem good candidates.
Washington (Tyne & Wear) could be a possibility, given that its a large place not served by rail, where the spread of housing, employment and shopping would make it hard for heavy rail to penetrate most of the town.
A guided busway from Heworth (either on the path of the Leamside line or a different alignment) would allow a frequent service from Tyneside to Washington (either through services from Newcastle, or connecting with the Metro at Heworth), but then allow different routes to serve Concord/ Galleries/ Nissan/ residential areas/ retail parks etc much more effectively than one train station could.
Same goes for Northumberland where a guided busway could funnel the large amount of traffic from Blyth/ Ashington/ Bedlington/ Cramlington into Newcastle, but heavy rail wouldnt be able to serve the variety of places very easily (given how spread out the towns are, especially Cramlington).
Plus, as weve seen in Edinburgh, a successful guided busway can be upgraded to a tram route at a later stage.
This is something that those complaining about the successful guided busway in Cambridgeshire forget a heavy rail service wouldnt be able to reach the various residential areas of St Ives, nor would it serve attractions like the Hospital in Cambridge the Cambridgeshire scheme couldnt be as easily served by the bluntness of heavy rail.
However, if you are talking commuter routes into London then high capacity heavy rail is the clear winner if you can pack a thousand people onto a commuter train doing point to point journeys then theres nothing that beats heavy rail. BUT, thats not to say that heavy rail is always the solution for everything and that theres no role for guided buses just not the one that this Think Tank is suggesting. Trouble is, any suggestion on here that heavy rail isnt always the answer risks being accused of being a Serpel apologist...
Bit of an own goal for them to chose an example where heavy rail is the clear winner. If theyd used the example of where a guided busway may be more effective than reopening a line to heavy rail (where theres been a move to low density suburbia, office parks and out of town retail parks, meaning a station in the old town centre wouldnt be as attractive as when a line was closed in the 1960s) then they may have made a better point. But then, I suspect that this was more about getting short term press releases into the media than offering any sensible long term strategy.
No need for busways to be guided. There are many great examples of busways that are just roads for buses in the Netherlands and in the Paris suburbs, where they plan to build quite a few busways over the next few years. Of course, South America is where the concept is exploited to the extreme with the famous Curitiba and Bogota systems where they shift vast numbers of people.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Guidance comes in really where you want to build a road on an old single track railway with a cycle lane next to it, as is felt to be a benefit. With a wider alignment there seems little benefit, unless the guided tracks are cheaper than normal roads perhaps?
With regard to cars using them, you can always stick a camera on either end of a regular road type busway and charge them a nice hefty fine for doing so
Neil
Trog
Established Member
I think the bus way would have to be guided, unless you want to enlarge all the bridges. Also how are the passengers of this new wonder system supposed to get to work during the gap between the last train and the first bus. Which would probably be a couple of years.
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