Scrap the misguided busway!

[Mojo]

Here is the Government's response to the "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap the Huntingdon-Cambridge Guided busway" peition.

The proposal for a guided busway arose from the Cambridge-Huntingdon Multi-Modal Study (CHUMMS), which was commissioned by the Government to investigate possible solutions to congestion on the A14. CHUMMS, which reported in Autumn 2001, rejected options for using light and heavy rail due to the high costs and reduced flexibility they would offer. The capital and operating costs of light and heavy rail would be higher than those of a guided busway and the level of patronage lower. A planning inquiry was held in September-December 2004. The Inspector specifically endorsed CHUMMS' findings.

Installing a rail link would be more expensive than petitioners might think. The former rail line between St Ives and Huntingdon has been built over in each town. Where the line crossed the River Ouse flood plain, all the bridges and several sections of embankment have gone. The line could not be reinstated on the old route and a new route would have to be found at considerable expense.

In addition to relieving congestion on the A14, the guided busway will link two new Park & Ride sites at St Ives and Longstanton and the existing site at Trumpington. It will serve large areas of proposed new housing in the Clay Farm and Shelford Rd areas, as well as Addenbrooke and Hinchingbrook hospitals.

Construction of the guided busway is well under way and is expected to be completed by early 2009. The Government believe it represents a significant contribution to resolving the transport problems faced by Cambridgeshire.

They don't seem to understand that the long term costs of buses are higher than that of railways! Still, we can hope it will be a massive flop and all future hairbrained schemes are scrapped

 

[Bonemaster]

Was in the area the other day to see the devastation on the line, level crossing ripped out, as anti guided busways as I am they do have a bit of a point, the line was in a terrible state as far as Fen Drayton and needed total relaying.

Heavy rail could not serve the busy areas of the south of the city being a good 600 metres away from anything it may want to serve, the proposed site of a station at Chesterton Junction is terribly served by local roads and the city station would have been more convenient to use for many even in the local area.

Cambridges city station is some distance from the city centre, a good 5-10 mins even by Bike, and the city centres narrow streets and listed buildings do not lend themselves to a light rail solution.

In St Ives the formation has been built on many years and the big benefits of the transport service come the through service to Huntington as well as St Ives to relieve pressure on the A14 road.

Best solution would have been an Electric service from Huntington to Liverpool Street (if you have seen Girton Interchange at 8am on a weekday you will know why) it was priced out (cant remember who by) some years ago, but they made such as mess of the estimates, that it was never going to be taken seriously leaving the door wide open for the guided busway even after Cambridgeshire County Council had given there backing to the railway line

 

[Mojo]

If they had wanted it to have penetrated the City Centre better they could've used light rail which offers a much better solution to moving mass passenger numbers and also tends to be higher respected by motorists than buses.

 

[gingerheid]

Of course one of this imaginative scheme's snazzy features is that at perhaps the most important bit there isn't room for it, as where it would otherwise have joined the railway line and gone into Cambridge it instead dumps the buses onto the busy roads.

So yeah. Don't go by car at the time of your choosing and convenience and get stuck in traffic at Girton and Huntingdon Road. Go by bus whenever it turns up and get stuck in traffic in north Cambridge. =b

I have the awful feeling that they've just spent hundreds of millions on something and when they could have made more of a difference by building a park and ride site somewhere around Bar Hill or Girton.

To me the route was at the very least begging to try out a tram-train

 

[Boxcars]

Personally I cannot see it relieving congestion on the A14 cratch: but I can see it adding to the congestion on Cambridge's already crowded city streets when it leaves the guided busway. ad3:

 

[Metroland]

Well the whole purpose of spending the £116 million plus on putting a special segregated bus route in (when it could have run more cheaply on current roads) was the relieve the A14. As the A14 is a trunk road, with most vehicles coming through from the Midlands or North to Cambridge to East Anglia, I highly doubt it will have much effect. There is very little evidence that buses create regeneration (I quote a recent article in the Transport times), but I suppose the advantage is they can come off and service the city - although I suspect timekeeping will be less than ideal. And I suspect there will be a few crunches when the fen fogs hit the area.

While not being totally convinced about the rail link - I suppose it would have made a handy link from Huntingdon and St Ives to Cambridge. It is worth nothing the bus route had 4 people supporting it, the railway 3800. The bus route had 2700 objections sent to the secretary of state for transport. So there's democracy at work for you.

 

[O L Leigh]

I think the point of the busway is that it gives folk along the busy A14 corridor a realistic option for getting quickly into Cambridge city centre. At present the options are either to take a regular bus into the city or drive to a P&R and get the bus from there. Either way, the route taken will be along the A14 itself. At least the services using the busway will not be using the A14 which means that they will not be subject to the same delays when the traffic gets snarled up, as it does on an almost daily basis. It won't do away with congestion on the A14 altogether because of the amount of traffic using this route that is not travelling to or from Cambridge itself, but it has the potential to remove a significant number of vehicles from the road which will help to relieve the congestion.

I have to say that I don't believe that this scheme is the best use of the technology, as the busway seems to be routed away from population centres at certain points. The system used in Leeds where the busway runs down the centre of the main arterial roads with regularly spaced stops seems a better option. However, it is probably the best option available for Cambridge. If Cambs CC had gone for heavy or light rail, the ridership would probably be lower because the routing would be inflexible. However, if you have a bus stop at the end of your road you might be more likely to use it if the frequency, price and journey times are right.

Unfortunately, Cambridge is not particularly suitable for building new rail links and certainly not for having trams running through the city centre. The city's roads are just not wide enough to permit light rail to run in a segregated lane, meaning that the trams would just be stuck in the same queues of traffic as the buses, but without the ability to switch lanes to get around any obstacle or find a faster moving traffic stream. You could possibly get trams up to the ring road, but you'd still be left with a lengthy walk to get into the centre. As for heavy rail, well it would be into the station and nothing closer, meaning that you'd still need to take a bus.

Incidentally, Cambridge is looking fairly seriously at levying a congestion charge to further restrict traffic entering and leaving the city, although quite what form this will take is still to be decided. In addition, Cambridge is already very well provided for with P&R facilities which has had a noticeable impact on the traffic entering and leaving the city. It's certainly the option I choose whenever I visit the city by car. In fact, I'm a huge fan of P&R and always look for signs whenever I visit somewhere for the first time. With the existing and projected P&R capacity in Cambridge, there really is no need for people to drive right into the city.

one TN

 

[Nick W]

So no one thought of narrow trams, similar to those once used in Ipswich to pass the narrow streets, narrow-gauge or monorail?

Nor an underground bus tunnel with tram tracks as forward planning, if cambridge is such a beautiful place that it can't be spoilt with infrastructure that "looks" so much worse than congested roads?


The best way to relieve traffic on the A14 would be to keep the current road as a local road, and build a parallel motorway to take the A14 and M11 traffic, taking a shortcut bypassing huntingdon, and feeding back onto the A14.

 

[Lewisham2221]

Sorry for wandering slightly off topic, but....

Why do councils/the government etc see the need to waste so much extra money building a guided busway? Either build a tram/train line or a giant bus lane without all the fancy extra technology?

 

[O L Leigh]

Nick: At what point does the engineering difficulty and cost become too much?

A narrow tram on narrow gauge track would be more expensive than a regular tram because it would need to be designed and engineered to order rather than being bought "off the peg". Monorail would be less flexible even than regular trams because they would need their own dedicated trackways (probably elevated). As for tunnels under Cambridge, that would be horrendously expensive and, given the low lying nature of the land on which the city stands, probably an engineering nightmare.

Lew: Why should local authorities build tram systems? They are expensive, disruptive to build and inflexible.

I think that you need to consider the area into which the system is going to be slotted. Rail needs enough space in which it can operate. Bus lanes take up a certain amount of road space that would otherwise be used by other vehicles. Trying to run either into a built-up area is actually likely to increase congestion unless these and other measures to reduce traffic levels are effective. The benefit of a busway is that it segregates the bus traffic from the other road traffic meaning that, along the busway sections, the buses are not contributing to the congestion and are free to run to their destinations without any hindrance. Of course, you're back to square one when the busway ends and the bus joins the regular roads, but it does at least handily shortcut some of the more congested parts.

one TN

 

[Nick W]

Nick: At what point does the engineering difficulty and cost become too much?

A narrow tram on narrow gauge track would be more expensive than a regular tram because it would need to be designed and engineered to order rather than being bought "off the peg".

Metre-gauge tramways exist in countries such as Germany and Switzerland as well as Eastern European countries. I'm sure new track must be made for renewals. However, a new system could be used in other parts of UK, and of course the rest of the world.

Monorail would be less flexible even than regular trams because they would need their own dedicated trackways (probably elevated).

Quite so, although they form a totally separate alignment that will not add to congestion, which is well-known to cost the economy millions.

As for tunnels under Cambridge, that would be horrendously expensive and, given the low lying nature of the land on which the city stands, probably an engineering nightmare.

At the end of the day, something has to be done, as the population of UK is increasing, and Cambridge has a particularly bad congestion problem, mainly because parts of the centre are inaccessible and all traffic relies mostly on the single ring-road.

Tunneling techniques such as injecting cement into the Earth, building slurry walls, using slury shields and even freezing the earth make tunnelling a lot easier. There's also the traditional compressed air option. Look at what a simple job the Channel Tunnel Rail Link's tunnel turned out to be.

 

[Metroland]

According to the multi-modal study that was done, the busway is expected to relieve around 2% of the traffic on A14. Under its current cost, the busway gets a cost-benefit score of less than 2, which means it shouldn't really be built. It was approved at a lower cost. But 100,000 tonnes of concrete and extensive re-engineering of the railway isn't cheap.

There's no easy solutions to traffic congestion in an ancient city like Cambridge, which was built for the horse and cart. For Cambridge, I'm not even in favour of trams - really because the streets are too narrow. I would of thought a network of covered cycleways, park and ride bus stations and a congestion charge would have done the trick. But Nick's meter gauge tram might have been worth a look.

One of the chief arguments for the railway was it would have connected the science park to the main station in just a few minutes. This would have been enormously beneficial for that location, and towards Huntingdon, with its high value jobs having a fast link to London.

 

[Lewisham2221]

Lew: Why should local authorities build tram systems? They are expensive, disruptive to build and inflexible.

I think that you need to consider the area into which the system is going to be slotted. Rail needs enough space in which it can operate. Bus lanes take up a certain amount of road space that would otherwise be used by other vehicles. Trying to run either into a built-up area is actually likely to increase congestion unless these and other measures to reduce traffic levels are effective. The benefit of a busway is that it segregates the bus traffic from the other road traffic meaning that, along the busway sections, the buses are not contributing to the congestion and are free to run to their destinations without any hindrance. Of course, you're back to square one when the busway ends and the bus joins the regular roads, but it does at least handily shortcut some of the more congested parts.

one TN

Seems that you my original post might not have been entirely clear, so I'll try and explain what I meant a bit better.

I basically meant that I don't understand why money needs to be spent on the extra technology associated with the busway. By all means build the busway itself - that is, a new road dedicated entirely to buses - but why not keep it that nice and simple?

And on the subject of bus lanes adding to congestion, up here we have bus lanes that not only add to congestion by taking up valuable road space, but also ironically end up causing delays to buses in one of two ways -

1) Most bus lanes only cover a very short distance and then require the bus to 'give way' when rejoining the traffic flow, which as you can imagine, often takes a while.

2) Where traffic lights have been installed to solve the above problem, in some instanced poor phasing of the traffic lights leads to other buses in the area that don't use the bus lane getting delayed.

 

[Metroland]

Just to link to that earlier article I mentioned in the Transport times.

Crossrail and High Speed 1, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, will be the main agents for increasing population and attracting inward investment in the Thames Gateway, according to a leading consultant.

Paul Buchanan, of Colin Buchanan, was speaking on transport priorities for the Gateway at the Thames Gateway Forum.

“There is very little evidence that buses affect development, even with a fancy name,” he said. The main impacts of transport on development are through agglomeration benefits bringing more people within reach of jobs – and regeneration by promoting growth in deprived areas.

“Crossrail does both, by connecting to the city centre and out to the Gateway,” he said.

“The vast majority of jobs in the Thames Gateway will be population- dependent. Access to employment in central London will be the key to growth.” Therefore rail accessibility was needed. “Only Crossrail and the CTRL link to main central London employment centres and will drive population,” The said. “Fastrack, the Docklands Light Rail, the East London and Greenwich transits and the Thames Gateway Bridge will improve accessibility within the Gateway, not to or from it. They will serve rather than create development,” he said adding: “Don’t expect bus schemes to encourage inward investment or significant population growth.”

Speaking from the floor David George, project manager of Fastrack, the bus rapid transit system serving Kent Thameside, said that it was necessary to distinguish
between ordinary bus and bus rapid transit. Fastrack route B – Dartford to
Gravesend via Bluewater and, since last month, Ebbsfleet – had achieved 19% modal shift in its first months of operation, even before redevelopment of the area it served.
Route A, which opened this year, had been paid for 100% by developer
ProLogis. It doubled the permitted size of The Bridge development
because it bypassed constraints on traffic access to the site.

http://www.transporttimes.co.uk/

 

[O L Leigh]

Tunneling techniques such as injecting cement into the Earth, building slurry walls, using slury shields and even freezing the earth make tunnelling a lot easier. There's also the traditional compressed air option. Look at what a simple job the Channel Tunnel Rail Link's tunnel turned out to be.

Indeed, but the Chunnel was driven through chalk which was why it was such a simple exercise. It just required them to bash a great big hole through and line it with concrete segments. Cambridge isn't built on chalk but on sandy or clay soil, which would be less easy to tunnel through. It is also incredibly low-lying. Any tunnels would almost certainly be under the water table and would require constant pumping to keep them dry.

It just isn't a practical or economic solution for the city.

I basically meant that I don't understand why money needs to be spent on the extra technology associated with the busway. By all means build the busway itself - that is, a new road dedicated entirely to buses - but why not keep it that nice and simple?

Agreed, up to a point.

It would make more sense to have just the basic roadway so that the existing fleet of buses could also be used on the busway. However, how much are we actually talking about in terms of the additional outlay for guided busway technology over and above the cost of the roadway itself (which will, lets face it, be the bulk of the outlay)? The roadway would need raised kerbs and the vehicles would need the guide wheels and linkages to the steering arms so that they can follow the route. What else?

And on the subject of bus lanes adding to congestion, up here we have bus lanes that not only add to congestion by taking up valuable road space, but also ironically end up causing delays to buses in one of two ways -

1) Most bus lanes only cover a very short distance and then require the bus to 'give way' when rejoining the traffic flow, which as you can imagine, often takes a while.

2) Where traffic lights have been installed to solve the above problem, in some instanced poor phasing of the traffic lights leads to other buses in the area that don't use the bus lane getting delayed.

Yeah, we've got precisely the same problems here also. It shows a sad lack of imagination on the part of the planners.

However, this is where I see the guided busways making a big difference. In Leeds they run down the middle of the main arterial routes, so that you get two lanes of traffic on one side, the busway in the middle and another two lanes of traffic on the other side. At regular intervals along the route there are pedestrian crossings leading to bus stops. This arrangement ensures that the bus traffic is segregated from the regular traffic while guaranteeing good access to the service for the passengers. Wherever there is a junction with cross-traffic, the buses get priority because they operate the traffic lights controlling the junction on approach. There is none of this cutting in and out of the traffic stream like you see with normal bus lanes.

Sure, they could have used the full width of the road to have three lanes of traffic on both sides with one being a dedicated bus lane, but then I'm sure we've all seen how often bus lanes get blocked by other vehicles. I would imagine it also aids maintenance, as the busway sees less traffic than the road alongside which it runs meaning it would need fewer repairs. It would also be unaffected by roadworks and traffic restrictions on the regular road.

Unfortunately, Cambridge doesn't have the arterial routes to take advantage of this. Instead, it would seem that the busway is filling the role that you would normally expect rail to fill. However, because of the nature of the city and the location of the railway station, rail can't offer the same flexibility or benefits in this particular location. I can see Metroland's point about linking the Cambridge Science Park to London, but not everyone in Cambridge wants to get to the Science Park, and nor do they all come into the city from the Huntingdon direction. Making this link would only cater for a marginal number of people currently using the A14, fewer I would argue than would use the busway because of the greater number of locations served.

Just to link to that earlier article I mentioned in the Transport times.

“There is very little evidence that buses affect development, even with a fancy name,” he said. The main impacts of transport on development are through agglomeration benefits bringing more people within reach of jobs – and regeneration by promoting growth in deprived areas.

Sorry, but I snipped you post for brevity.

While I'm qualified to gainsay what the expert says in your quote, I think it's fair to highlight the differences between the Thames Gateway development and Cambridge. The former is an entirely new development which currently has only a developing need for transport. The latter is an existing city whose transport infrastructure is creaking at the seams. The former will need transport to drive it's development (after all, if you work in London you won't want to move to the Gateway if there is no way to get to the office) but the latter does not require transport to drive further development but to cater for the existing needs.

I have to say that the information you've posted about the Fastrack system would seem to support the Cambridge busway. Fastrack seems to be a success and popular among the travelling public, and has actually permitted increased development because it doesn't impinge on traffic access.

On the wider point of Cambridge's traffic situation, I had a long chat with my sister who lives in Ely and works on the Girton Road. At present her only option is to drive because the railway station is on the wrong side of the city and the buses (including the P&R) only go into the centre and out again. It seems that the congestion charge is the favoured option at present, although the proposals at present seem crazy and entirely counter-productive. According to her, the entire city will be covered by the charge including the P&R sites. Really the charge needs to start after a vehicle has driven past the entrance of the P&R, not on it's way into the car park. However, it does seem that P&R is going to be expanding. There are already six P&R sites with at least three more that I'm aware of (St Ives, Longstanton and Milton).

one TN

 

[Mojo]

However, this is where I see the guided busways making a big difference. In Leeds they run down the middle of the main arterial routes, so that you get two lanes of traffic on one side, the busway in the middle and another two lanes of traffic on the other side. At regular intervals along the route there are pedestrian crossings leading to bus stops. This arrangement ensures that the bus traffic is segregated from the regular traffic while guaranteeing good access to the service for the passengers. Wherever there is a junction with cross-traffic, the buses get priority because they operate the traffic lights controlling the junction on approach.

Would you not find a light rail scheme running on tram tracks down the middle of the road a far more attractive option though?

While the effectiveness of light rail in attracting car users has been clearly demonstrated, the ability of bus-based schemes to affect significant mode shift in the UK remains largely unproven

...

For example, the guided bus system on Scott Hall Road in Leeds uses a series of
relatively short stretches of guideway on, or immediately adjacent to, existing roads.

...

Around
6% of passengers actually reported using the bus as a result of the guided bus
investment, while others were prompted to do so when changing job or home. While
the operator estimates that between 10% and 20% of new passengers have shifted
from car, other researchers have found little direct evidence of a reduction in car use

...

These responses are encouraging but, in comparison to light rail, suggest a much
lower level of car transfer:

 

[Bonemaster]

Metre-gauge tramways exist in countries such as Germany and Switzerland as well as Eastern European countries. I'm sure new track must be made for renewals. However, a new system could be used in other parts of UK, and of course the rest of the world.


Quite so, although they form a totally separate alignment that will not add to congestion, which is well-known to cost the economy millions.



At the end of the day, something has to be done, as the population of UK is increasing, and Cambridge has a particularly bad congestion problem, mainly because parts of the centre are inaccessible and all traffic relies mostly on the single ring-road.

Tunneling techniques such as injecting cement into the Earth, building slurry walls, using slury shields and even freezing the earth make tunnelling a lot easier. There's also the traditional compressed air option. Look at what a simple job the Channel Tunnel Rail Link's tunnel turned out to be.

With the almost feudal land ownership in Cambridge city centre, dozens of historic listed buildings, owned by powerful colleges, who will never give permission for a tunnel to be built under there land, they are even responsible for the rather unusual layout of Cambridge station, so as students didnt have to carry there heavy bags over steps, they are also responsible for the stations 'off centre' location as they didnt want trains near students. The line north of Cambridge being nearing capacity, all add up to being rather large issues.

Cambridge has a huge commuting population due to the issues caused by high house prices driving medium skilled and low skilled workers out and more jobs going than the population can fill.

The point someone made about the science park was sadly flawed in that the peak flow of traffic is actually people coming into the city in the morning and leaving in the evening. The ring road in Cambridge is a poorly designed mish mash of roads to such an extent that my wife didnt even believe it was a ring road,

Even the cities own plans for a tramway avoided the city centre as much as possible.

The options were a heavy rail route at high cost that didnt serve the places people wanted to travel, a tramroute that wouldnt serve the city centre well either at a very high cost, or a guided bus route. It will be interesting to see how well it is used particulaly as Cambridge has the lowest bus patronage and poorest bus services of any UK major town or city

 

[O L Leigh]

Mojo: I get what you're trying to say about the relative attractiveness of light rail and buses, but we're not talking about any old city. We're talking about Cambridge.

While the light rail lobby no doubt has a strong general argument, the benefits do not necessarily translate to every single city in the UK because the transport needs, geography and road layouts are different in each.

one TN

 

[Mojo]

You are right there, certain things aren't right for every location. A place where I used to live (population 65,000) was awarded funding to become a "Cycling Demonstration Town," because of the town's size I feel this is a very beneficial improvement and could work. But it's not done on its own. It's combined with two town bus quality partnership routes, three "intertown" quality bus partnerships, three non-statutory quality contracts and a number of other contracted bus routes. Together with a brand new transport hub which is under construction, a huge number of bus lanes radiating from and orbiting the town centre, improvements to the railway station, a new railway station in a development area and probably something else I've missed out.

But the general consensus is that ex-rail lines are generally suited to conversion to LRT, trams aren't that much wider than buses and their design means they are suited to running on roads with mixed traffic. Sheffield Supertram runs on road more than any other tramway IIRC.

 

[Bonemaster]

You are right there, certain things aren't right for every location. A place where I used to live (population 65,000) was awarded funding to become a "Cycling Demonstration Town," because of the town's size I feel this is a very beneficial improvement and could work. But it's not done on its own. It's combined with two town bus quality partnership routes, three "intertown" quality bus partnerships, three non-statutory quality contracts and a number of other contracted bus routes. Together with a brand new transport hub which is under construction, a huge number of bus lanes radiating from and orbiting the town centre, improvements to the railway station, a new railway station in a development area and probably something else I've missed out.

But the general consensus is that ex-rail lines are generally suited to conversion to LRT, trams aren't that much wider than buses and their design means they are suited to running on roads with mixed traffic. Sheffield Supertram runs on road more than any other tramway IIRC.

And the biggest criticism of the Supertram was that trams got caught up in traffic, Ex railway lines are suited for conversion to LRT, but on street running the lines have to be segregated to achieve the biggest benefits, some towns and cities can do that others can not. It isnt the conversion of former railway formations that costs the money its the new build street running sections the cost. Hence why Cambridges guided busway converts to conventional street running through the central sections

 

[Mojo]

You are right, on street running means the tram gets caught up in traffic. The same traffic the buses get stuck in. But trams are more attractive than buses and on average each tram scheme removes 20% of vehicles from parallel routes therefore the traffic it gets stuck in is less

 

[O L Leigh]

But Cambridge would need a lot more than a 20% traffic reduction to prevent trams getting caught up on the on-street sections, and it's the success of the on-street sections and how well it can penetrate the city centre that would determine the overall success of the scheme. If the traffic remains heavy, there's no way for a tram to pull out to avoid an obstacle or change lanes to find faster flowing traffic.

I wonder if there will ever be a case for trams on Cambridge's roads at some point in the distant future. If they can successfully introduce a congestion charge, remove more of the city centre parking and develop the city's P&R facilities further, it might be enough to persuade car drivers that the need to drive all the way into the city is no longer there. If the relevant charges were balanced right, the only traffic you'd have left in the city would be residents only.

The policy could even be taken a stage further by integrating planning, business rates and transport policies, so that there are incentives for retailers to open local branches close to centres of population, restrictions on the proliferation of out-of-town retail parks and an assurance that any such centres are adequately served by public transport services. Add in an Oyster Card like local incentive scheme for cheaper local travel, and car ownership in the city could become an irrelevance in much the same way as it is in London. Even folk coming into the city from outside should see the benefits, with larger and more secure P&R facilities with fast, frequent and affordable fares into the city. Together, it might just be enough to create enough space on the city's roads for a light rail system of some sort.

Well, a bloke can dream can't he...?

one TN

 

[Metroland]

I see the congestion charge has already got nearly 9,000 objections on the No 10 website for Cambridge. Quite substantial for a city of not much more than 100,000.

 

[1D53]

Sorry I've only just seen this! Being someone from Leeds whos lived on routes served by the East Leeds Guided busway, I'm sorry but it is just an awful waste of money. At peak times the bus can be quicker (but no quicker than the sections of bus lane that are in operation!) and off peak you lose time overall as the bus rolls along at 20mph in a bus lane while the rest of the traffic flies by at about 40! In fact many of the services served by the Leeds guided busway have now got extended timetables as a result. Main example being the 163/4/5/6 routes between Leeds and Castleford operated by Arriva - it used to have a 'flagship' 1hr jourey time in total before the guided busway, its now 1hr 9mins. As the route serves mainly housing estates/backroads its very difficult to suggest that this is because of traffic elsewhere, it is simply down to it losing 5 or 6 minutes per trip in a poorly thought out guided bus way.

 

[Bonemaster]

There is a big difference here between the existing schemes and the Cambridge scheme, whereas existing schemes used modified roadways, this is the first scheme to use predominantly new build routes away from existing transport corridors, it is only some of the parts in the city which are being built using the same kind of builds as seen else where

 

[Nick W]

For ages I've been moaning that transport planners don't use theme park transport in town centres.

But look http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7197859.stm
Does Mojo approve?

 

[Mojo]

At £200 million, you could get yourself a half-decent tramway. Of course it's not a good idea!

 

[Metroland]

Seems a bit slow to me. Of course tramways should never have been ripped out in the first place in preference for buses, but that's politics for you.

 

[Nick W]

Seems a bit slow to me. Of course tramways should never have been ripped out in the first place in preference for buses, but that's politics for you.

Though from my experience anything faster than walking is good in a city-centre. Cycling is probably the fastest thing around as they can get round congestion easier.

At £200 million, you could get yourself a half-decent tramway.

All very well if you can find a way of trams avoiding congetion.

 

[Mojo]

1. Off street alignments
2. Where they do run on street, congestion will typically be lower as trams attract high modal shift - even higher when combined with Congestion Charging, high parking fees or restricting traffic which can use a certain road