Derailment on Cambridgshire Guided Busway

[overthewater]

I was reading Focus transport, about how Manchester was getting advice from Cambridge.
http://www.focustransport.org/2016/02/manchester-guided-by-cambridge-on-busway.html

There have now been more 13.6 million passengers on it since the busway opened in August 2011. The 12-month rolling total is 3.6m.
The busway is also expected to see a further surge in popularity next year, when the first homes at Northstowe are completed and the new Cambridge North railway station opens.

The busway doesn't even have the new town taken into account. Is there enough room for doubling of the frequency? Is there any more room at peak times?

 

[Hophead]

I was reading Focus transport, about how Manchester was getting advice from Cambridge.
http://www.focustransport.org/2016/02/manchester-guided-by-cambridge-on-busway.html



The busway doesn't even have the new town taken into account. Is there enough room for doubling of the frequency? Is there any more room at peak times?

At every 5 minutes, there ought to be room on the busway: motorways see traffic at up to 70 miles an hour just seconds apart and that doesn't have the benefit of a guideway. It may be a different matter on the streets of Cambridge itself, though - I'm not sure how easy it would be to funnel another dozen buses through each peak hour.

 

[edwin_m]

so explain why both the Cambridgeshire and Luton Busways had delayed openings due to awaiting sign off by the railway inspectorate.. and why the busway that was supposed to serve the millenium dome never opened because the railway inspectorate refused to sign it off?

orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/2567/rogs-guidance.pdf

Page 10 clause 12:

The main types of transport that are not a transport system under ROGS (referred to as ‘exclusions’ throughout this document) include the following
...
• Guided buses

http://orr.gov.uk/what-and-how-we-regulate/health-and-safety

We regulate health and safety for the entire mainline rail network in Britain, as well as London Underground, light rail, trams and the heritage sector.

And the source for your statement is?

 

[Teflon Lettuce]

orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/2567/rogs-guidance.pdf

Page 10 clause 12:



http://orr.gov.uk/what-and-how-we-r... it signs off busways before they are opened!

 

[AnonymousUser1]

When you think how soft a bus suspension has to be to cope with potholes etc (unlike steel wheel on steel rail) it wouldn't be a great surprise if a bus bounced down & up so much that its guide wheels popped out of the kerbstone channels - or whatever the proper names for those bits are...

AIUI for guided busways the guide bars are attached to the hub carriers and form part of the unsprung structure .

 

[edwin_m]

well that hardly answers my question unless the answer is that the Railway Inspectorate has been overstepping it's authority in insisting that it signs off busways before they are opened!

You asked me to explain why the Railway Inspectorate delayed opening of three busways. Since I have never heard that said I'm not in a position to explain it - if you want an explanation then perhaps you could start by letting us know why you believe this to be the case.

As far as I'm aware the delays to Luton and Cambridge busways were down to contractual disputes and lack of completion, and the Dome busway predated ROGS anyway.

 

[BestWestern]

I'm interested as to why in that photo the engine compartment is open. Was it necessary to stop the engine via an emergency button? There was no mention of the driver having been injured, so could he not switch it off himself from the cab?

It's possible that the force of the impact may simply have caused it to open, as the bus has presumably bounced rather hard up the raised kerb, and then continued up the bank at an inclined angle.

 

[Busaholic]

It's possible that the force of the impact may simply have caused it to open, as the bus has presumably bounced rather hard up the raised kerb, and then continued up the bank at an inclined angle.

You may well be right.

 

[jopsuk]

It appears that the bus company are squarely blaming the driver. It did happen at the single-double track transition, for which I believe there's a 30mph speed limit (think it's 50 or 55mph generally on the system). If I were a betting man I'd reckon the angle they're investigating is that the driver was going too fast. It's unlikely there will have been any pedestrian or cyclist he was trying to avoid (and forward facing camera would quickly exonerate him if that were the case).

 

[WatcherZero]

They've been quick to say the same wont happen in Leigh because they designed it to go over former rail bridges rather than have single sections below them. Cambridge bods indeed have been advising in Manchester on what not to do. They went with a totally different construction method to Cambridge in light of their experience (extruded track sections rather than jointed pre-cast sitting on concrete sleepers).

 

[nerd]

http://www.heart.co.uk/cambridgeshi...driver-went-far-too-fast/#Hr1wZCi2Y0yHwg8O.97

Driver was travelling at 53 mph going into the guided section - when the maximum is 30 mph.

the derailment happened following a secion of single-line running (under a bridge), at the point where the single line section changed to two-line standard.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The busway doesn't even have the new town taken into account. Is there enough room for doubling of the frequency?

Yes, and some. Unlike a railway there are not signalling sections - the limit to the number of buses is just the number you can physically fit on the length of road available, which is many, many times the number that actually run.

If it was the likely heavy rail alternative, a 2-car DMU once an hour, it'd be creaking at the seams with no expansion viable.

 

[BestWestern]

http://www.heart.co.uk/cambridgeshi...driver-went-far-too-fast/#Hr1wZCi2Y0yHwg8O.97

Driver was travelling at 53 mph going into the guided section - when the maximum is 30 mph.

the derailment happened following a secion of single-line running (under a bridge), at the point where the single line section changed to two-line standard.

Oh dear. Prosecution to follow, I would imagine.

 

[nerd]

Yes, and some. Unlike a railway there are not signalling sections - the limit to the number of buses is just the number you can physically fit on the length of road available, which is many, many times the number that actually run.

If it was the likely heavy rail alternative, a 2-car DMU once an hour, it'd be creaking at the seams with no expansion viable.

Buses along the busway have to run separated by at least 500m. standard running speed is 90 kph; - down to 60 kph in the burst-though sections, and 48 kph where guided running starts.

So (if my maths are right) the theoretical limit is around 90 buses per hour; though I suspect that, in practice, any more than around 50 per hour would result in continual irritating delays, waiting for the bus ahead to move on.

 

[overthewater]

So Stagecoach and Whippet could still double the freq and still have plenty spare?

 

[edwin_m]

There's a busway in Istanbul that claims to run a bus about every 20 seconds. However this is achieved by running them in squadrons of three, with the platforms being long enough for all of them to stop almost simultaneously, one behind the other.

 

[Ianno87]

Yes, and some. Unlike a railway there are not signalling sections - the limit to the number of buses is just the number you can physically fit on the length of road available, which is many, many times the number that actually run.

If it was the likely heavy rail alternative, a 2-car DMU once an hour, it'd be creaking at the seams with no expansion viable.

The capacity of the Guided Busway is not that unlimited.

The limited capacity of the streets of Central Cambridge is the limit, since the guided busway gives out at either end.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Buses along the busway have to run separated by at least 500m.

Why? It's a road. Surely normal road braking distances apply.

 

[edwin_m]

Why? It's a road. Surely normal road braking distances apply.

Hmm. That makes me worry that the busway drivers think they're train drivers, something that seemed to be possible based on forum discussion when one hit a cyclist a few years ago. Like any road (or indeed a tramway) they should stop on seeing an obstruction and not be going too fast to do so.

 

[notadriver]

Hmm. That makes me worry that the busway drivers think they're train drivers, something that seemed to be possible based on forum discussion when one hit a cyclist a few years ago. Like any road (or indeed a tramway) they should stop on seeing an obstruction and not be going too fast to do so.

I've heard busway drivers complaining that they are held to blame for any collisions that occur on the guideway compared with train drivers who 'get away with it'.