Rapid Transit System- Birmingham

[Bungle965]

It would seem that Transport for West Midlands are having consultations about the implementation of a new Rapid Transport System called "Sprint". The project certainly seems ambitious, 3 routes are to be delivered in time for the Commonwealth Games in 2022 and the rest as part of the Hs2 connectivity package. They are also talking about cycle routes alongside Sprint.
https://www.tfwm.org.uk/development/sprint/

Like all the world’s great cities and regions, the West Midlands is building an integrated rail, bus and rapid transit network. Alongside new rail and metro stations, much of this network will be Sprint bus rapid transit, the right form of rapid transit for passenger flows on our major, high volume routes.

Sprint will play a really important role in making sure that the West Midlands takes full advantage of the economic opportunities that HS2 brings. In addition, improving the public transport means better air quality for everybody.

Rapid Transit – or Sprint – is a limited stop service with dedicated bus lanes which will provide priority for public transport through areas of congestion, making journey times more dependable for passengers.

The vehicles operating on these routes will offer passengers a level of service and comfort similar to a tram with off-board ticketing, multiple-door boarding, wheelchair and pushchair access, free Wi-Fi, air conditioning as well as on-board audio visual announcements and travel information.

By 2026, we expect the Sprint network to be made up of seven routes and these will provide essential links to the two HS2 stations serving the region in Birmingham City Centre and Birmingham International.

The 3 routes that are to be delivered first are the ones that link up the games venues seemingly, with the exception of the Sutton Coldfield to Birmingham one

Seven routes have been identified as Sprint corridors with three to be delivered for the 2022 Commonwealth Games and the rest, which are part of the HS2 connectivity package, by 2026. They will ensure access to key high speed rail interchanges such as Curzon Street, Birmingham Interchange and Birmingham Airport.

A total of 7 routes will make up the Sprint network and these will be operational by 2026, in line with HS2.

Three of these routes have been prioritised and will be delivered in time to support The Commonwealth Games in July 2022. They are:

• Birmingham Airport and Solihull to Birmingham City Centre (A45) passing the Games venues at the NEC site
• Walsall to Birmingham City Centre (A34) passing the Athletes Village at Perry Barr and Alexander Stadium
• Sutton Coldfield to Birmingham City Centre via Langley (SBL) linking to the new residential development at Langley and the business development in Peddimore

In addition, we have combined the first phase of the Sprint proposals for the Hagley Road with plans to extend the tram to minimise disruption for residents and passengers and to bring forward the benefits of dedicated bus lanes for existing bus users.

 

[nerd]

It would seem that Transport for West Midlands are having consultations about the implementation of a new Rapid Transport System called "Sprint". The project certainly seems ambitious, 3 routes are to be delivered in time for the Commonwealth Games in 2022 and the rest as part of the Hs2 connectivity package. They are also talking about cycle routes alongside Sprint.
https://www.tfwm.org.uk/development/sprint/

The 3 routes that are to be delivered first are the ones that link up the games venues seemingly, with the exception of the Sutton Coldfield to Birmingham one

Thanks for the link Bungle;

the Sprint proposals have been knocking around for quite a bit; this announcement appears mainly to focus on what can be delivered for the 2022 games. One issue which was formerly unresolved was the specificed length for the articulated units. Department of Transport standards (I believe) limit buses to 18m/single articulated; but Birmingham were exploring a derogation that would permit them to run 24m/double articulated bus units. To me, it looks like this is no longer on the cards.

 

[Bungle965]

Thanks for the link Bungle;

the Sprint proposals have been knocking around for quite a bit; this announcement appears mainly to focus on what can be delivered for the 2022 games. One issue which was formerly unresolved was the specificed length for the articulated units. Department of Transport standards (I believe) limit buses to 18m/single articulated; but Birmingham were exploring a derogation that would permit them to run 24m/double articulated bus units. To me, it looks like this is no longer on the cards.

To me it appears they will be following the same route as what are being introduced in Belfast in terms of VanHool articulated units which are 18m.
https://www.vanhool.be/en/news/van-hool-builds-30-trambuses-for-belfast
Sam

 

[bussnapperwm]

Yet another waste of taxpayers money from the WMCA, the same people who will willingly subsidise a bus route which averages less than 3 people a journey...

 

[NotATrainspott]

Well this is going to be yet another perfect demonstration of BRT being value-engineered into the ground. They'd be a whole lot better off if they just bought some fancy double-deckers with special branding - it's hardly like these buses are actually going to be mostly standing passengers (which is what bendy buses can do better than double-deckers). Save the money on the purchase price and the maintenance costs for the fleet and spend it on having more infrastructure.

 

[nerd]

Well this is going to be yet another perfect demonstration of BRT being value-engineered into the ground. They'd be a whole lot better off if they just bought some fancy double-deckers with special branding - it's hardly like these buses are actually going to be mostly standing passengers (which is what bendy buses can do better than double-deckers). Save the money on the purchase price and the maintenance costs for the fleet and spend it on having more infrastructure.

As I understand it; the Sprint proposals in their current form involve considerably higher infrastructure investment that had been formerly envisaged. Learning the lessons of the Cambridgeshire and Leigh-Manchester busways.

The question of how best to configure BRT in the UK is an important one; certainly one option (as per the Cityzap services) is to use double-deckers with premium branding and high specification seating. But this model appears to work best for longer distance, higher speed services running in from satellite towns.

For BRT within central conurbations, I think that a better case is for articulated buses with multiple doors and mainly standing passengers. These will be considerably slower (standing passengers are not comfortable at higher speeds) but can servce routes with high volumes of short distance travellers (e.g. to and through the university campus)

 

[Bungle965]

As I understand it; the Sprint proposals in their current form involve considerably higher infrastructure investment that had been formerly envisaged. Learning the lessons of the Cambridgeshire and Leigh-Manchester busways.

The question of how best to configure BRT in the UK is an important one; certainly one option (as per the Cityzap services) is to use double-deckers with premium branding and high specification seating. But this model appears to work best for longer distance, higher speed services running in from satellite towns.

For BRT within central conurbations, I think that a better case is for articulated buses with multiple doors and mainly standing passengers. These will be considerably slower (standing passengers are not comfortable at higher speeds) but can servce routes with high volumes of short distance travellers (e.g. to and through the university campus)

I get the impression that Birmingham has looked at Manchester but mainly Belfast and thought, yes we'll be having some of that. In terms of Manchester they saw the tremendous success of the guided busway and the fact that buses are routinely full and leaving people behind with extra buses having to be deployed to manage the demand, despite the fact that many people put it out to fail right from the start.
Birmingham are following a similar route of Belfast with their RTS and will hopefully learn from any of the mistakes that were made there.
Does anyone know how that project is getting on, I believe that we are near the completion date for it, I seem to remember seeing some of the buses being on test a few weeks back.
Sam

 

[nerd]

I get the impression that Birmingham has looked at Manchester but mainly Belfast and thought, yes we'll be having some of that. In terms of Manchester they saw the tremendous success of the guided busway and the fact that buses are routinely full and leaving people behind with extra buses having to be deployed to manage the demand, despite the fact that many people put it out to fail right from the start.
Birmingham are following a similar route of Belfast with their RTS and will hopefully learn from any of the mistakes that were made there.
Does anyone know how that project is getting on, I believe that we are near the completion date for it, I seem to remember seeing some of the buses being on test a few weeks back.
Sam

Glider services will launch officially on September 3rd; 'shadow-running' this week.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...em-will-prove-a-smooth-operator-37249690.html

I think you are right to see Sprint and Glider as counterpart products; Belfast are looking to improve peak service timings by around 25%-30%, compared to current stopping buses; and that looks like the sort of improvement that BRT services will need to demonstrate if they are to establish themselves as usable Urban Rapid Transit systems for UK citiies.

 

[Aictos]

If these Sprint routes DO turn out to be successful then maybe they could be converted to Midland Metro routes?

 

[nerd]

If these Sprint routes DO turn out to be successful then maybe they could be converted to Midland Metro routes?

Not as now envisaged.

Essentially, that appears to be the substance of the more recent upgrading of the proposed system. Originally, Sprint was presented as a pre-'Metro' network, with an explicit aspiration that Sprint roues might eventually convert to Metro routes. The corollary of this was that infrastructure investment in the Sprint routes themselves was expected to be relatively modest; as TfWM did not want to be seen ripping up costly buslanes and priority junctions once the opportunity arose to rebuild as tram tracks.

The problem was that the resulting Sprint services would have shown very little immediate improvement over the peak period timings of stopping buses. Sprint would mainly consist of 'tram-like' articulated buses running along standard bus infrastructure. The revised specifications call (as I recall) for the majority of each route to run within dedicated buslanes, with an expected peak period average speed in service at least 20% better than existing stopping bus services at peak periods. For the most part these are unlikely then to be capable of easy re-use as tram-tracks.

This appears to be one of the lessons taken from the Leigh busway experience; where the conversion of the former rail alignment to busway use was deliberately configured in a form that precluded later re-use as tram-track. Bus Rapid Transit works best where it runs along routes for which it is optimised; rather than on the basis of of routes that would be better served by full-scale tram operation. Moreover one lesson from both the Cambrdgeshire and Leigh busways are that BRT routes are best integrated with high quality bike lanes along a parallel multi-user path. Trams and bikes do not mix anywhere near so easily along the same route.

The contrary warning example might be proposed as the Leeds trolleybus scheme; which sought to run bus vehicles along alignments previously identified for the cancelled Leeds tram scheme; with results that never really made sense as a bus-based network (and turned out to be notably bike unfriendly)

https://www.tfwm.org.uk/media/2658/160309_sprint-standards_v1.pdf

 

[Man of Kent]

The parallel bike route was effectively arrived at by accident. As most maintenance vehicles cannot use the guideway, an alternative was needed. Most of the Luton-Dunstable guideway also has a parallel path next to it.