Removal of Luton-Dunstable railway bridges for Busway

[asylumxl]

Luton Borough (****) Council have put posters up around the town informing people of iminent road closures due to the replacement of the aforementioned bridges. Now we're sure it's going ahead.

This is bloody appauling. Why spend so much when the line is in great condition and that could easilly be used or converted into a light rail route?

There's something fundamentally wrong in the minds of the government. Their busways never come out as they plan, yet they continue to *******ise usable lines...

 

[Mvann]

Obviously no lessons learnt from the cambridge white elephant project

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Bedfordshire (I assume they control Luton & Dunstable) and Cambs County Council should be tried for breaching human rights by building the busways

 

[stut]

Bedfordshire (I assume they control Luton & Dunstable) and Cambs County Council should be tried for breaching human rights by building the busways

Bedfordshire went unitary - there is no county council above Luton Borough.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Bedfordshire went unitary - there is no county council above Luton Borough.

Well whoever chose to build the guided busway Luton-Dunstable should be taken outside and shot. Honestly. Idiots. They wanted to build heavy rail back to Dunstable, then onto Leighton Buzzard, so Luton Airport/Luton-Milton Keynes & Birmingham trains would have been possible, but sadly never now

 

[asylumxl]

There is a degree of irony. Luton Borough Council think that there will be an increase in rail passengers to Luton station in order to use the busway. I doubt it, anyone whom needs to go to Dunstable will already use the existing buses anyway.

Another ironic thing is that they used cost as grounds for not choosing a rail solution. It seems that this is going to be horrifically costly .

 

[Jordy]

Ridiculous, another complete and utter waste of money.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Along with the St Ives/Cambs one, I hope this falls well and truly flat on its face, this is absolute rubbish, hopefully no other councils/unitary authorities/idiots have the idiotic idea of doing this, Luton COuncil should hang their heads in shame, and rightly so.

 

[yorkie]

It's not a breach of human rights! It is a risky exercise; I am surprised they are doing this in light of the problems with the Cambridge to Huntingdon route.

I don't think it will prove to be cost effective, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Trams are proven to work (Manchester, Croydon etc), they cost more but are good value in the long run. Misguides buses are unproven. Wasn't Edinburgh a white elephant? Can anyone cite any good schemes?

 

[MidnightFlyer]

It's not a breach of human rights!

Apparently, its a crime to even look at them Horrible, horrivle things. Think it was on YT I read a gu who worked in germany on guided busways and said wherever they went in West Europe, they failed. Good.

 

[mumrar]

The people in charge of these things always seem to be influenced by dream-like ideas of how things will pan out. They are nearly always nothing like reality, and if the money spirals out of control like the Cambridgeshire one, it will have a double effect due to the council budget cuts. In this case people should be removed from their roles if it happens.

I despise buses as transport, and guided busways seem to bring us all the disadvantages of tram/train without any of the advantages of bus travel. Let's see how much of a fail this turns out to be.

 

[jopsuk]

The main problem with the Cambridge one is not the horrendous over run, or the poor choice of technology- it's the fundamental issue that it doesn't in itself avoid congestion. The end of the north bus way is on the city boundary- the buses then have to negotiate a very busy road that has, for much of its length, no bus lane. There's no space.

Will this busway be repeating this idiotic design?

 

[asylumxl]

Will this busway be repeating this idiotic design?

Yes. The buses will come off the busway and onto the same congested roads it's supposed to avoid to get to Dunstable.

 

[stut]

To be fair with the Cambridge one, the A14 is horrendously congested at peak times, and that's exactly what the busway is avoiding. Doesn't stop it being an idiotic idea, though.

The Kesgrave busway is Ipswich is pretty good.
But it does what it's supposed to - provide a fast, bus-only route in a congested urban area.

 

[Greenback]

Unbelievable! Despite the success of long term heavy rail reopenings and light rail schemes, these idiots are still going for a guided busway?!!!

 

[asylumxl]

The saddest part is that people who pay attention and oppose the council are in the minority. Your average person is indifferent to the council, and doesn't care either way what they do.

And I think it's sad when there's so little pride in a town that they don't protect their heritage, nor do they any longer care if their government actually represents them.

 

[Greenback]

For most people, certianly where I live, most people have become so cynical that they have given up trying to fight any ridiculous schemes put forward by 'the powers that be'.
People who do oppose such things as council schemes are seen as naive and daft, as they can't win. Mix this in with a bit of apathy, and you can see why these schemes go ahead!

 

[asylumxl]

It's reopening had been proposed for a while. No chance anymore. Didn't the 319s come with a destination blind for Dunstable?

 

[Greenback]

There was talk of reopening to Dunstable at least from the early 90's. I don't know if there was a destination blind made up though!

 

[hairyhandedfool]

As I recall the scheme was thought of in 1990, when Chris Green is alledged to have wanted to re-open the rail route (which is why 'Dunstable' appears on NSE destination blinds apparently). Right the way upto 1996, there were four options, Tram, Bus, Diesel railcar, Thameslink expansion.

South beds Council (as was) and Luton borough Council agreed to the busway and when they finally got the money from government, South Beds council admitted they only said yes because they didn't think the government would help pay for it!

Given that the relief road (that runs down the side of the old line) was meant to bypass the gridlock caused at the Luton end of the A505, at the Duntable end of the A505 and at the M1 Junction (the first two of which it fails to do!) and that the midway junction causes more chaos at the Oakley Road roundabout (on the A505) as M1 traffic tries to join the relief road (it was actually supposed to join the A505 at Humberstone Road where there are traffic lights), I have little faith that this will be anything but a very costly and frankly pathetic scheme that will not be used by many, certainly not the numbers they predict.

Are there still about 8 bus routes between Luton and Dunstable along the A505 that work out at a bus every 3-4 minutes with Luton station served every 10-15 minutes?

FWIW, I don't think the tram idea would've worked either.

 

[gordonthemoron]

the guided busways in Leeds are reasonable

 

[tbtc]

Misguides buses are unproven. Wasn't Edinburgh a white elephant? Can anyone cite any good schemes?

The Edinburgh scheme was a short stretch of service 22, which was always intended to be converted to tram tracks.

In fact, the tram tracks are one positive to take from Guided Busways. By maintaining a route (rather than watching viaducts crumble and embankments errode), there is scope for conversion to tram at some stage in the future (a plan in Sheffield 20 years ago was proposed with the "carrot" that the Guided Busways could be converted to tram routes at a later stage.

You can't blame the council here. They are trying to get people out of cars and into public transport. The trouble is that the Government's restrictions (I'm not blaming the coalition, but central Government generally) mean it is very hard for councils to borrow money to pay for infrastructure projects. Whitehall seems scared that local councils will be borrowing beyond their means on "white elephant" schemes, which means the cost of a tram scheme in Leeds/ Portsmouth/ Liverpool (or extensions in Sheffield/ West Midlands/ Nottingham) become prohibitively expensive.

Manchester has got some of it's tram extensions agreed, after much negotiation, but even then, it's not got everything it wanted.

So, in the circumstances, all the Council can afford is a Guided Busway. Better than nothing, I guess.

Leeds, Bradford and Ipswich all have guided busways which work to one degree or another. Personally I think some of the West Yorkshire sections are too short to be worth bothering with, and that a guided busway would be best on a long single section, like the Cambridgeshire one will be.

Maybe once Cambridgeshire has been running for a few years we'll be able to have a realistic debate about the merits (rather than bleating about "human rights").

 

[asylumxl]

As already mentioned, there are many frequent buses already running to Dunstable. Combine this with the fact the buses aren't going to avoid the congestion anyway, makes the whole thing just seems a waste.

It's something atleast, but why not just have a dedicated road for buses? Why are "guided" buses required?

 

[Mvann]

The Cambridge system will have little to no effect on the congestion on the A14 as most of the traffic is not local. Also, I suspect it will affect the villages that are served by buses now, but that won't be on the busyway route.

 

[Deerfold]

The Cambridge system will have little to no effect on the congestion on the A14 as most of the traffic is not local. Also, I suspect it will affect the villages that are served by buses now, but that won't be on the busyway route.

I don't think the system is supposed to affect the congestion. It's supposed to allow the buses to not be affected by it. Although it seems rather overblown when there's a bus only every 10 minutes.

 

[Mvann]

The council sold it as taking local traffic off the roads by getting people to use the guided busway.

Just out of curiosity, where is the planned start/end of the guided busway at each end of the Luton Dunstable route.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

we'll be able to have a realistic debate about the merits (rather than bleating about "human rights").

Sorry, didn't know some people didn't know a '' smilie at the end means a comment was lighthearted hock:

 

[bangor-toad]

I'm late to this thread but...

What else other than a bus route could this route now be?

That's a serious question not troll bait. Here's what I understand of the situation:

There is no way to extend the line westwards to Leighton Buzzard. There's a new housing development in Dunstable itself on the trackbed, the A505 has pinched a few miles and the approach into LB has been heavily built on. It'd be essentially a new build on a different allignment.
V. expensive and it doesn't fill a strategic need.

The link to the main line at Luton would be difficult. Even if the Luton FCC terminators were extended to Dunstable along a reopened branch line, how wold they get there?
The slow lines are on the east of the fasts and services would have to cross the fasts. Are there paths available on the fasts to allow this? If not, there needs to be a flyover. This'd be expensive for a short branchline with 1 station.

A re-build as light rail or tram would be a single run of a few miles from Luton into Dunstable. There'd be little or no expansion potential at a sensible cost. The system would be small and all of the maintainence infrastructure would have to be built to service a small number of tram/light rail cars.
It'd be prohibitally expensive.

If the route is used as a busway, then at least the route is used. It has low costs as the maintainence of the buses can be undertaken at existing depots and they can be used on normal roads.
Even though I think rail should be used wherever possible, I think that this is the best that can be achieved for this route. Sad but ecomonics are the key driver...

Jason

 

[MidnightFlyer]

light rail is better than a busway, and who mentioned that the Dunstable trains would be on the slows in the first place? Light rail is far more economical than busways, they cost a ton to build.

 

[asylumxl]

I think it's really quite ironic. Back when it was closed buses were seen as the future and a better solution. But since buses use roads, which are prone to traffic, they're now trying to implement a solution to the problems with buses. And how are they doing that? By making a guided busway, with buses which follow a set route. Sounds similar to something...