Should buses replace tram and suburban rail services?

[Sweetjesus]

Recently I have had opportunity to use road that are designated as for bus use only.

I arrived at my destination about a 25% slower than compared to using a train. The journey being 25% slower than usual can be explained by the fact bus has to stop everywhere whilst trains don't.

Should we be focusing on this model as it can be much cheaper and there's a lot of scope for improvement, for example, increasing road speed limit to 50-60 mph, using a mixture of express bus routes and local services on the same road, etc?

It would also free up capacity for semi-long distance and long distance rail services massively.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Recently I have had opportunity to use road that are designated as for bus use only.

I arrived at my destination about a 25% slower than compared to using a train. The journey being 25% slower than usual can be explained by the fact bus has to stop everywhere whilst trains don't.

Should we be focusing on this model as it can be much cheaper and there's a lot of scope for improvement, for example, increasing road speed limit to 50-60 mph, using a mixture of express bus routes and local services on the same road, etc?

It would also free up capacity for semi-long distance and long distance rail services massively.

The Victorians built many suburban railways which died out through competition with Gen 1 tramways for exactly the reasons you suggest.

The main difficulty with buses in built-up areas is that they have to go along roads which are going to be busy with other traffic, including pedestrian crossings. Building bus lanes and so on does speed them up, but there's a fairly low maximum average speed limit in built-up areas. That means your area within viable commuting distance of urban centres isn't that great.

The only other routes that most cities have through established built-up areas which aren't used as normal roads are normally disused or currently used railway alignments. These aren't always that suitable for conversion to bus use, as the alignments (including things like bridges) are normally built only wide enough for trains running on fixed rails and not to standard road dimensions. An example of a former railway turned into something like an express bus route is the Edinburgh West Approach Road.

Modern Gen 2 tramways provide probably the best compromise between bus and train for urban routes. That's because they can reasonably effectively operate as either one, depending on the situation. If a city has an established network of suburban rail routes, then Gen 2 tramways can be very cheap to start up as you can sometimes use the existing rail infrastructure as-is. In Manchester, the original Altrincham and Bury routes of the Metrolink network only really saw re-electrification at 750V DC OHLE and some minor tweaks rather than complete reconstruction. Then, where the routes previously merged and competed for space with longer-distance rail services, you take the tram and put it down onto street level and operate it as a standard street-running tramway.

 

[radamfi]

Recently I have had opportunity to use road that are designated as for bus use only.

I arrived at my destination about a 25% slower than compared to using a train. The journey being 25% slower than usual can be explained by the fact bus has to stop everywhere whilst trains don't.

Should we be focusing on this model as it can be much cheaper and there's a lot of scope for improvement, for example, increasing road speed limit to 50-60 mph, using a mixture of express bus routes and local services on the same road, etc?

It would also free up capacity for semi-long distance and long distance rail services massively.

You are basically describing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The most pure form of it is common in South American cities where they carry vast numbers of people. Australia also has a number of large BRT systems. BRT is also common in France and the Netherlands, although generally used for medium numbers of passengers and they tend not to follow full BRT standards like in South America. In Europe we tend to reserve high capacity for rail and metro. BRT using guided buses is quite popular in the UK, notably the Cambridgeshire busway between Cambridge and St Ives.

 

[Sweetjesus]

You are basically describing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The most pure form of it is common in South American cities where they carry vast numbers of people. Australia also has a number of large BRT systems. BRT is also common in France and the Netherlands, although generally used for medium numbers of passengers and they tend not to follow full BRT standards like in South America. In Europe we tend to reserve high capacity for rail and metro. BRT using guided buses is quite popular in the UK, notably the Cambridgeshire busway between Cambridge and St Ives.

Thanks!

I've had a quick search using the names you've provided. Using Cambridge bus way as an example - why was it necessary to custom design the road so it requires guidance wheel system to be used? Why couldn't normal roads be used instead? Do you know of such system that take advantage of using 'normal' road design with two lane in each direction?

The Victorians built many suburban railways which died out through competition with Gen 1 tramways for exactly the reasons you suggest.

The main difficulty with buses in built-up areas is that they have to go along roads which are going to be busy with other traffic, including pedestrian crossings. Building bus lanes and so on does speed them up, but there's a fairly low maximum average speed limit in built-up areas. That means your area within viable commuting distance of urban centres isn't that great.

The only other routes that most cities have through established built-up areas which aren't used as normal roads are normally disused or currently used railway alignments. These aren't always that suitable for conversion to bus use, as the alignments (including things like bridges) are normally built only wide enough for trains running on fixed rails and not to standard road dimensions. An example of a former railway turned into something like an express bus route is the Edinburgh West Approach Road.

Modern Gen 2 tramways provide probably the best compromise between bus and train for urban routes. That's because they can reasonably effectively operate as either one, depending on the situation. If a city has an established network of suburban rail routes, then Gen 2 tramways can be very cheap to start up as you can sometimes use the existing rail infrastructure as-is. In Manchester, the original Altrincham and Bury routes of the Metrolink network only really saw re-electrification at 750V DC OHLE and some minor tweaks rather than complete reconstruction. Then, where the routes previously merged and competed for space with longer-distance rail services, you take the tram and put it down onto street level and operate it as a standard street-running tramway.

I was referring to roads that have been designated as for bus use only - other commentator has mentioned Cambridge bus way which is a good example.

Good example regarding to trams, I realise it can be better to convert rail to tram if it can be done cheaply.

 

[radamfi]

Thanks!

I've had a quick search using the names you've provided. Using Cambridge bus way as an example - why was it necessary to custom design the road so it requires guidance wheel system to be used? Why couldn't normal roads be used instead? Do you know of such system that take advantage of using 'normal' road design with two lane in each direction?

You don't have to use special roads like the Cambridgeshire Busway. In Britain there was a fetish for guidance in the 90s-00s but most BRT systems around the world just use normal roads. The main advantage of guidance is that you can fit a bus lane into a narrow space. I don't know anywhere where they use two lanes in each direction.

 

[AndyW33]

Thanks!

I've had a quick search using the names you've provided. Using Cambridge bus way as an example - why was it necessary to custom design the road so it requires guidance wheel system to be used? Why couldn't normal roads be used instead? Do you know of such system that take advantage of using 'normal' road design with two lane in each direction?

The Cambridge bus way uses the formation of the former Cambridge - St Ives branch railway for part of its route. A railway requires considerably less formation width for one track in each direction than a one lane in each direction normal road does. In some areas there was no land available to widen the formation at realistic cost. The issue of course is to ensure that when buses travelling in opposite directions meet while doing the permitted speed, the risk of them sideswiping each other is minimised.
Trains and trams deal with this automatically because the rails ensure the vehicles are at a safe distance when passing, specially engineered roads using buses with guidance wheels do the same. On conventional roads drivers can and do sometimes cross the centre lines due to inattention, distraction or poor road conditions, but modern roads also have sufficient width available for drivers to take some avoiding action, which wasn't an option on part of the busway.
Many think that given the build quality problems that have plagued the busway, it would actually have been cheaper to convert the railway to a tramway, running on existing roads in the city centre and at the outer extremities.

 

[Non Multi]

There's also the 'bus only' link road (as used in Swindon). A quite clever bit of new town planning that means a quiet residential cul-de-sac can be on a local bus route without the need for a massive turning circle or loop road.

 

[Man of Kent]

Non-guided busways include Runcorn, Fareham-Gosport "Eclipse" and parts of the "Fastrack" system in north Kent. The section of the latter through the Bridge development in north Dartford is protected by barriers at each end, to keep out ordinary traffic. Eclipse had no such protection when I last visited and the odd private car would use the busway. Guided busways automatically restrict the "track" to buses only (although the Luton and Cambridge local news websites contain many stories where other vehicles have tried to access the guideway with varying degrees of mishap).

 

[edwin_m]

A bus is much more restricted in size than a train. A few busways run double-articulated buses up to about 25m long, but if the bus needs to run on normal roads as well then it is probably limited to under 20m. Trams can be much longer, up to 70m in some cases, although even they are restricted on street sections by issues such as the distance between junctions. A busway in Instanbul claims a bus every 15s but what it actually runs is a squadron of about four buses every minute that stop nose to tail at a long platform, and obviously none of them can move off until the first one is ready. Busway capacity can be improved by allowing overtaking at stops, as in Ottawa, which isn't really practicable for trams. But this really means there must be a mix of local and express routes because if all buses did the same route then as passenger numbers increased there'd be bound to be at least one passenger alighting at each stop. A city centre bus station handling vehicles every few seconds would probably also be a lot bigger than a railway station handling the same number of passengers in trains every minute or so.

All this means that a tram can handle many more passengers for the same number of vehicles and drivers, and a train even more. Their energy costs are also lower because steel wheels have less rolling resistance than rubber tyres. So for high passenger numbers a rail solution is best - the South American busways are only really viable at those high numbers because labour costs are low, and Ottawa converted its busiest busway to light rail. However a busway or BRT may be justified at intermediate passenger numbers where a service of large trams would be too infrequent or have lots of empty space, or if there is a busy core route into the city but services split out into much less frequent routes serving different suburbs, hopefully on roads that aren't too congested. Obviously at even lower numbers it's not worth dedicating the road space for a busway so all you get is bus priority or nothing at all.

 

[Wirewiper]

There are a number of short bus-only roads. The ones on Reading Buses route 26 allows buses to pass between adjacent housing estates at Southcote, Ford's farm and Beansheaf without time-consuming diverts up to the main road and back again. The infrastructure is simple, a one-lane bus gate with a raised "sump buster" in the middle to deter private cars.