Attitudes to busways really do need to change. Are the only people who are positive about them bus operators? On the one hand, there are motorists who feel bus rapid transit is ineffectual. Then there are planners who feel that only a light rail (tram) scheme can ever encourage modal shift. They seem only to shift emphasis when a tram is financially out of the question, as these undoubtedly will be in the new straitened times. Locals directly affected along the alignment want neither tram nor busway but the bus seems so low profile and so locally polluting that it becomes anathema.
What we really need is more of a body of evidence to support the notion that BRT wins modal shift and encourages significant ridership increases. If the world’s longest busway, in Cambridgeshire, had only started when it should’ve (last year), then we would have yet more significant inter-urban hard facts. Double delays mean yet further patience on the part of Stagecoach and passengers. Overruns, faults unfixed and floodings continue, though news now coming through is more positive. Meanwhile, Stagecoach began damage limitation regarding its fleet of 09-plate bio-ethanol busway vehicles in an attempt to distance itself from the problem not of its making.
Environmental campaigners fight on in what is increasingly becoming a futile attempt to block the south Hampshire busway, between the towns of Fareham & Gosport. A further court has rejected the campaigners’ attempts to halt the project though, who knows, this may still fall to the axe of public spending in a cutting of losses.
The latest was in the supreme court, which concluded last week, that bats and badgers would have to budge to make way for the BRT scheme.
It’s been more a campaign to halt a busway than to protect the environment and wildlife. The locals simply do not want buses running up and down their back gardens. I would challenge whether trams, as in the original proposals, would be less intrusive (in terms of nuisance).
If the campaigners considered the risks to the bats and badgers—most of which would presumably move elsewhere, I guess—against the wider environmental benefit of easing traffic along the beleaguered A32, the peninsular one road to Gosport, then they would perhaps be more sympathetic towards buses.
And better a busway than a new road proper (which would probably have been given the nod straightaway had it been the 1980s). For this is what the campaigners actually are saying: build a separate by-pass in a completely different location. Away from us.
This surely can be neither good for the local environment nor the answer to Gosport’s traffic problems. We know from every other occurrence that such a thing would be totally ineffectual in halting traffic congestion. It would simply double the capacity on the existing car park that is the A32. So long as it’s well managed, with BRT there’s at least a chance that Gosport can at last break from its car-born environmental problems in a modern, innovative, positive, cost-effective and far reaching way, without such an invidious, expensive and intrusive a project as a tram or unsustainable new all-modes dual carriageway.
It’s all about new attitudes and new thinking, really. If only we can make the leap.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Budge Over
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4 comments:
I can't see much justification for dedicated busways except in a *very* few locations. I know Fareham - Gosport, so would agree that it may be one of the few but I'm less sure about Cambridge and whether it really will take sufficient car traffic off the horrendous A14. Runcorn was a slightly different, and fairly original, concept inasmuch that a new town was being developed around it.
To my mind, a busway is neither one thing or the other. It still needs much the same amount of land as would a tram. The costs are reduced by less wires, electrics etc but increased overall by the shorter life of a bus. The big downside of a bus is that the overall ride quality will usually be inferior to a tram, and have little of the more relaxed environment associated with just gliding along tracks.
If you're building substantial dedicated infrastructure, I'm not convinced bus has much of an advantage over rail. And rail will certainly attract more passengers than bus due to the prevailing view in the UK on such things, like it or not. And the longevity of a lightly-used railway is well known.
The really provocative answer to Gosport is to say "why not a tunnel under Portsmouth Harbour..."
There are better ways of getting buses priority than separate roads: transponder controlled traffic lights and bollards would do 90% of the job at a tenth of the price.
I think there are very limited circumstances when a busway is beneficial, and more or less none where a guided busway is beneficial.
When it simply takes out space from an existing road corridor (as in Leeds), I can't see any reason for it. Just have an ordinary bus lane with enforcement cameras and priority measures - you will get all of the benefits at a fraction of the cost, without causing havoc for buses, bus users and other traffic, and without taking as much roadspace.
Where you are building a dedicated road through open countryside (as at Cambridge), you have to question how valuable a service it is going to provide. As it is largely following the old railway route, it grazes the edge of the towns and villages it passes, which will not be attractive to passengers who are currently served by buses running right through the villages. These intermediate villages are small and already served by existing bus routes, in some cases by very good bus routes. Moreover, several of the villages are so small that even if all the residents started using the busway, it would make a negligible impact on traffic. Cottenham, Willingham and Over are considerably larger than Oakington, Longstanton and Swavesey, but these villages won't benefit from the busway unless residents drive to a P&R site - which is hardly achieving the goal of reducing car usage. And on the long haul - St Ives already has 5bph to Cambridge, including a 20-minute frequency service that does the journey 4 minutes quicker than the busway will. You could achieve far more benefit for far more people by improving bus services along existing roads at a fraction of the cost.
In a nutshell, the reason why the Cambridge Busway is a waste of money is because, at great expense, it bypasses roads that are by and large fast and free-flowing, and does nothing at all for the buses through Cambridge, which is where the bus priority measures are needed. That's a very empty road you're building.
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