Loony busway will be complete in October

[fgwrich]

Ive got to say, and i know i came in quite late but A guided busway is a disaster anywhere...How councils and the goverment belive in such a stupid waste of money i dont know...Its time that people woke up and actually looked at how bad these things are....Afterall, look at the disaster that is this busway...Cambridge to St Ives would have been far better as a...

TRAM TRAIN

As would Fareham- Gosport, Luton and oh look whats happening to the Edinburgh Guided Busway..Its being turned into a Tram Line!

Take fareham to Gosport for example, Guided busway will involve the stripping of what is currently a disused railway, rebuilding of embankments and heavy stabilisation - afterall youll be putting massive and heavy concreate sections on top of it, diversians etc of utilities, rebuilding of roads and junctions, then youve got to lay it all, add streetlighting, build the stops, order the buses - and how long will they last?10/15 years

Now compare it to a Tram Train - What have you got to do?

Relay an exsistin railway route and add in a few passing loops en route, construct a few modular stops which seriously wouldnt be that expensive, add in signalling and OLE and Order the trams which have a life span of how long? 30 - 40 years...

Ok so then you have to rebuild the road to take the trams, but surley even this would be fairly cheap as quite a good few roads in the fareham area could do with renewing anyway...But being a Tram Train, could be a mix of Deisel and Electricity, so Therefor no overhead wires required thrurther off the main tramway...Plus, the tram train could go to the Ferry terminal in Gosport, then to the old station, up the line with various stops to Fareham Rail Station, then down to the town - Fareham town centres quite a distance from the rail station...Hence this would connect the two easily enough...and there onwards...And just think, if your a resident along that line, what would you rather have? street lights blaring down your back garden and the mass noise of all the construction works, then once open, the noise of these buses going past every few minutes? or the quite whisp of a electric Tram going past at several KMH / MPH?

And Think of how green these guided busways are...Afterall, were all being encouraged at the moment to Use Electricity and save fuel, so how is a fuel hungry guided busway any differant to using a Normall Bus ? Whereas at least the Tram uses a wonderfull thing called Electricity...

Fair enough, a Tram Train sceme would cost that bit more, but would last, Far longer and would reap the benefits far more easily than a Busway... Afterall, Look at Croyden! ive used the Croyden tram loads of time and i think its brilliant...ive used a guided busway in Crawley before and i thought very little of it...Another over priced, late sceme that was...

What Towns and Citys should be looking at are more scemes like Croyden,DLR, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester... They all have Trams, or in edinburghs case are getting Trams, And there Networks are being extended or have been extended over the years, Look at Manchester! Or the Ever expanding DLR - Ok its not a tram, but it is a light rail system!

Why is it only the select Few that have the brains for such brilliant scemes - And look at the systems in Germany aswell! And mumrar, i wholly agree with you there, afterall, why is it Germany has quite a good few very sucessfull tram train scemes and only 1 guided busway...The guided busway has closed due to age of the buses reasons...Yet here, in Britain, we latch onto some other countrys rubbish idea and seem to think 'oh that looks good, lets try it over here no matter how much it costs...even if it is a disaster in other countries...Take a look at the O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide...The Various extentions of that have been canned due to...Financial Reasons...Oh Dear, another busway bites the dust...

Of course nother problem that bit the Cambridgeshire busway in the arse, was some idiot seem to have forgotton that Cambridgeshire is in the Fens, and laying massive concreate slabs on boggy ground really isnt much of a good idea, thus the track laying machines managed to damaged large sections due to weight, and thus had to be replaced...at a cost of how much? And where does all that money come from Exacatly ? oh yeah, The Tax Payers!

Take a look at how many there are in the world, wont take to long, theres not many of them!

Sorry, but my veiws of these disasterious, over priced s**t will not change and i still continue to revel in amazement on how stupid these councils actually are when considering every guided busway built in this country has been over budget, over priced and tbh, RUBBISH!

rich

 

[O L Leigh]

I'm sorry, Rich. But your post seems to be just a rant as it doesn't actually address any of the issues facing Cambridge.

The problem with any rail-based iniative is that it can't access the city centre. Cambridge is a medieval city with narrow streets and no easy or obvious route into the centre. Equally, surrendering what little road space there is for a tram lane would only serve to INCREASE congestion in the city.

I broadly agree that trams would be a better and greener solution, but you have to understand that a tram network will not suit every city, and Cambridge is one where it would not be suitable. Then again, on the green point, a bus making progress along it's own lane will be less polluting than a bus stuck in traffic or twenty or so cars that it takes off the road.

My objection to the busway is not because it uses buses instead of rail but because ANY scheme will not deliver what is expected of it. As I said above, any alternative transport scheme aimed at getting people off the A14 and into Cambridge will not work because it only provides an alternative to a small proportion of people who currently use that road.

O L Leigh

 

[90019]

and oh look whats happening to the Edinburgh Guided Busway..Its being turned into a Tram Line!

It was a good idea in theory, the problem with it is that Edinburgh Council are idiots and so built it on the cheap, meaning that it was very badly built; IIRC the concrete had to be redone within months of it opening because the ride was so choppy over it.

 

[jon0844]

I see that at least one major train manufacturer has developed a new way of powering trains (albeit at low speeds, but perfect for a system like this), without the need for third rail - which needs to be protected - or overhead lines.

It works on the same principle as an inductive charger for a mobile phone or similar, such as the one that comes with the Palm Pre - or charge up cordless toothbrushes.

Of course, such technology on such a large scale is still early days and the Cambridge scheme was already well underway by then.

 

[90019]

Are you referring to the APS system developed for the Bordeaux tram system?

 

[starrymarkb]

The Essen guided busway was still in use last year (well it still had vehicles on it!

 

[jon0844]

http://www.bombardier.com/en/transp...press-releases/details?docID=0901260d800780ff

 

[90019]

http://www.bombardier.com/en/transp...press-releases/details?docID=0901260d800780ff

Could've just said yes.

 

[jon0844]

Sorry, but I didn't know about a specific implementation - I just did a quick Google search and posted the URL without reading it in depth.

So, if it is the same thing then;

yes.



(And surely the link is of benefit to other members who may not have a clue what either of us are talking about!)

 

[jopsuk]

The Edinburgh Guided busway was always intended to be converted to a tram line. That's why it was built the way it was, which resulted in the poor ride quality. It was built using initial funding for the tram project, before all the money was in place.

Also, that Bombardier system is not the same as the Bordeaux system, which uses surface contact (third rail, essentially) with short sections of contact rail being switched on only when fully covered.

 

[90019]

(And surely the link is of benefit to other members who may not have a clue what either of us are talking about!)

I was meaning put both

But, having looked a bit closer, it's not the same system, the Bordeaux trams are Alstom as well.

 

[gingerheid]

I'm not convinced trams couldn't run in Cambridge, I think that if they really wanted to they could make a one way tram loop that touched the edge of the city centre. It would probably have the disadvantage of not being any use for people travelling within the city though.

As regards the busway journey times, there is a draft timetable out and the busway journey time is identical to what it is currently.

However you have to keep in mind that the the journey times for the buses were revised shortly after Stagecoach took over from Hunts and District, to add a massive amount of slack in St Ives!

 

[Metroland]

Cambridge is probably a bit on the small side for a Tram, I suspect trolley buses are out too because attaching catenary to historic buildings is a bit tricky. Like Oxford, cycling and bus based solutions are best, but not the busway. That money would have been better put toward East West rail, and it would encourage people from the South Midlands to travel to these historical cities without private cars which completely choke them.

Unfortunately the trucks on the A14 are entirely down to government policies of running manufacturing industry down and importing everything in via East coast ports. Most of those trucks are just heading to distribution centres in the Milton Keynes/Northampton/South staffs area - the centre of the road haulage industry. Again, a lot could go by rail if east-west links were better.

 

[scandal]

Some interesting discussion going on here, in order to understand the scheme I took a look back at some of the archives on the CAST.IRON website. It seems ideas to reopen the railway line began as far back as 1994, without the current emphasis on Carbon savings and congestion the scheme was obviously viable some 15 years ago and since then we have seen an increase in vehicles on the road from 25m to 33m! With a possible additional extension to Huntingdon and thereby also increasing speed of journey between St Ives and Huntingdon and unlocking future through routes particularly for freight the scheme for reopening the rail line especially when looking at the comparitive costs of the busway is a no brainer. The only possible way I can see any weight to the substance of the busway being cheaper is over the life of 30-40 years in terms of maintinence costs, that said I have no idea the costs or requirements to maintain the railway but the busway seems to be fairly maintience free from what is being said.

 

[Waddon]

I don't know much about guided busways, but can I ask - what happens if a bus breaks down on a guided busway? How do they move it/get past it?

 

[gingerheid]

They've bought / are buying some kind of guided tow truck to pull them out. Not fancying the sound of the disruption while it does so though, it's just got to be worse then if traffic backed up a bit to get round a broken down bus on a normal road. And that's if the problem isn't something like a back wheel falling off!

 

[Waddon]

They've bought / are buying some kind of guided tow truck to pull them out. Not fancying the sound of the disruption while it does so though, it's just got to be worse then if traffic backed up a bit to get round a broken down bus on a normal road. And that's if the problem isn't something like a back wheel falling off!

I apologise for this long list of questions, but... as I don't know much about guided busways, is there the facility to run 'wrong lane' or cross over between lanes, or even exit part way along and return to the ordinary roads? How far does a bus have to go within the guided roadway before there is an exit, or opportunity to turn round, or whatever, and can you even reverse a bus in a guided busway?