Busways - can we use them here

Colm R

Well I've had the pleasure of using busways in Brisbane, and I must admit I thought they were fantiastic.

They are completely flexible. Brisbanes system was based on the idea that a suburb would have one or many routes servicing it which would join the busway and express it to the City.

Other routes would just run from a suburb to the nearest busway station and back again requiring passengers to change onto an express bus.

The flexibility of the system is amazing. A train might carry 600 passengers, a bus might carry 60 passengers but the throughput of buses is far greater and also the ability of the buses to move off the mainline into the heart of communities adds to its efficiency.

Brisbane has some commuter rail lines which have been around for sometime, but the general policy of the Queensland govenment is to develop the bus way system only.

Busway stations look something like Luas stops. Local bus routes stop towards the end of the platform and express routes which are remaining on the line stop at the top of the platform.

Whilst travelling on the busway, I noticed a bus had broken down. An electronic sign advised the driver of this well in advance and he simply overtook the broken down bus. Try that on a train.

Whilst I would not promote the ripping up of the existing train network in Dublin, I might even go as far to say that Luas Lines would be better suited to the flexibilty of buses.

Brisbanes busway network is not very extensive, with two major lines at the moment they are continuing plans to expand it further.

murphaph

Whilst I believe the bus is never going to be replaced as the workhorse, feeding passengers into the railheads, I don't believe busways are a good long term use of funds compared to quality LRT/heavy rail.

Is Brisbane's system a guided busway, cos those things are bloody awful. Guided busways have notoriously bad ride qualities, so you'd likely know if it was or was it just a completely segregated bus only expressway?

Metrobest

Colm R wrote: »

Well I've had the pleasure of using busways in Brisbane, and I must admit I thought they were fantiastic.

They are completely flexible. Brisbanes system was based on the idea that a suburb would have one or many routes servicing it which would join the busway and express it to the City.

Other routes would just run from a suburb to the nearest busway station and back again requiring passengers to change onto an express bus.

The flexibility of the system is amazing. A train might carry 600 passengers, a bus might carry 60 passengers but the throughput of buses is far greater and also the ability of the buses to move off the mainline into the heart of communities adds to its efficiency.

Brisbane has some commuter rail lines which have been around for sometime, but the general policy of the Queensland govenment is to develop the bus way system only.

Busway stations look something like Luas stops. Local bus routes stop towards the end of the platform and express routes which are remaining on the line stop at the top of the platform.

Whilst travelling on the busway, I noticed a bus had broken down. An electronic sign advised the driver of this well in advance and he simply overtook the broken down bus. Try that on a train.

Whilst I would not promote the ripping up of the existing train network in Dublin, I might even go as far to say that Luas Lines would be better suited to the flexibilty of buses.

Brisbanes busway network is not very extensive, with two major lines at the moment they are continuing plans to expand it further.

I've also had the pleasure and while the routes that cross over the river to the bus station at the South Bank (in an urban regeneration area) are impressive, it's important to remember how different Dublin is to Brisbane or any other Australian city.

Brisbane is a typical grid-style city with a high rise CBD and low rise sprawling suburbia of lower density than Dublin's. While Dublin strives to protect what architecture it has, Brisbane goes for function over aesthetics with a motorway running on stilts parallel to the river.

Busways work in isolated cases such as Brisbane which hardly have the density to support a luas-style system. Dublin, in fact, is a European city and does have quite respectable densities in its metropolitan area, and I don't think anyone can now seriously argue that Dublin cannot do with high-density transport in the midst of the stunning success of both luas lines in terms of passenger numbers and user satisfaction.

What Dublin could take from Brisbane (a city of similar population) is:
1. Brisbane has flexible integrated ticketing that integrates public and private buses with trains.
2. On routes out of the city of 3 lanes I saw lane-flow traffic light controls where you have 2 lanes inbound in the morning and 2 lanes outbound in the evening. This strategy could be seriously beneficial for Dublin's traffic in the many parts of the city where peak flows are in one direction only (eg. Navan Road)

Colm R

murphaph wrote: »

Is Brisbane's system a guided busway, cos those things are bloody awful. Guided busways have notoriously bad ride qualities, so you'd likely know if it was or was it just a completely segregated bus only expressway?

Its a completely seperate bus express way. Each of the stations along its route has a nearby exit out onto streets, thus allowing buses to express to the suburb which they are to serve.

I worked with a few people there. The general consensus was it changed the attitude to buses. Beforehand, people liked to travel on one bus to work and home and if this was not possible, they drove. The busway brought about a change in culture where people were willing to change buses and use connections to get to where they needed to. This was no doubt down to increased reliability.

Also, if you lived on a bus route which joined the busway but did not continue to the city, you simply alighted, wait on the platform and catch the next bus. Unlike say a train station where you have to get off the bus outside the station, enter the station and proceed to the platform. Its all psychology but it works.

dowlingm

"can we use them here"

well, I suppose we can use anything - the question is where. Busways require much of the infrastructure/land take spend of LRT without the capacity or the elimination of diesel power (excepting where trolleybuses are used). As we're seeing with the Red line, LRT can be branched too. The difference is LRT tends to support densification better than busways because it is concentrated rather than distributed. Distributed buses favour sprawl and Irish cities have enough of that already.

For me I am suspicious that the sudden political interest in busways and bendybuses is intended to throw ROI money at an NI bus manufacturer in the name of peace, as well as Bus Eireann defending its territories from LRTs it won't get to run.

(addition: am interested to know what the climate is like in BNE, the fare system for transfers as well as the skanger factor. These are three major impediments to transfers in the DB/BE systems.)

AlekSmart

Dowlinggm wrote...(addition: am interested to know what the climate is like in BNE, the fare system for transfers as well as the skanger factor. These are three major impediments to transfers in the DB/BE systems.)

By golly theres an example of getting right down to the brass tacks....and you even spotted the Wright way and wrong way too....

Yes indeed there is a lot of political posturing ongoing at the minute concerning all of this with little evidence that ANY of them care about, never mind Understand,the concept of Attractive Public Transport.

All told I would recommend closing down this thread immediately cos it`ll only get the boards collective BP elevated especially if we start bringing in issues such as car parking at Kilmacud Luas etc etc...:)

Zoney

Having seen the mess in Cambridge as they build a guided busway, it doesn't seem sensible to spend so much just on buses. With light rail you have a lot more to show for the efforts, and you can carry a lot of people.

If light rail isn't necessary - the route can probably be catered for by ordinary bus - although ensuring bus priority at junctions etc. should still be an aim (something we don't have even with QBCs in Dublin).

weehamster

Busways - can we use them here

To put it very simply...No.
Unless you are willing to sacrifice thousands of homes, there is simply no room in Dublin for a segregated road solely dedicated to Bus.

Now you could go underground, but if you are even bothering to do that, you might as well go a bit further and build a train/tram to make it a higher capacity line. If fact I feel that if you even bother to go to all that effort to build a segregated busway overground, you might as well built a train/tram line.

And to those who argue that the DART/Metro tram/Luas tram are a waist of money and we should be buying more buses with more QBC instead, only a fully segregated bus lane like in Brisbane would make this idea work. Because the buses are fully segregated, no traffic will interfere with the bus frequency apart from buses effecting each other. Our QBC's are not segregated and traffic can and does interfere with the service and therefore can't offer the capacity required.
Oh ye, here is an interesting photo of a Q of bus on the Busway.


What we can take from Brisbane and what we really need is a Greater Dublin Transit Authority to oversee and coordinate all of the services, DART, Commuter, Metro tram, Luas tram, Bus and even taxis. This alone would have a major impact.

Colm R

Before I go on, I am not anti luas. I just want to debate the idea of a bus way.

So here it goes, (my argument only really has any sway in a world of integrated ticketing.

If for example, the Green Luas line was originally built as a Bus Way. And then say the a new massive development was to be built in Leopordstown or somewhere close to the Luas Line, but outside its immediate catchment area, say 2km plus from it.

The capacity of the bus way would easily allow for a new bus route(s) to start in this development and continue to the bus way and then into town. This does not require the construction of a new bus way or light rail line, just new buses that can link into existing infrastructure by simply driving onto it.

AlekSmart

ColmR`s point is quite valid and worth considering in the context of what we can AFFORD to put in place in the current fiscal situation.

Remember it`s not long since former Taoiseach Aherne quite testily responded to media queries about T21`s financial standing with a resounding (for him) assurance that the funding was effectively ring fenced.
Well it appears that ring fence has been thoroughly snipped and rolled up allowing those funds to be otherwise alocated.

Why else would our current Transport Minister issue nutty press statements describing the Transport21 project as being a great idea in 2 or 3 years time...?? WTF

With Metro North suddenly appearing to traverse the infamous North Dublin Swamplands it is not scaremongering to predict another "Billions spent-Nothing Built" scenario mirroring the "Integrated Ticketing" fiasco......any betting folk out there ?? (Merchant Bankers excluded)

dowlingm

Colm R, since your example is based on the premise that you "start a new route" I'm assuming that the link from the "Leopardstown development" to the busway would be on non-right of way roads (because if it was a busway branch my original comment applies re: branched LRT)

You'll find that a lot of transit operators don't like doing that over any distance more than a trivial one because congestion on the non-ROW part screws the timetable/headways on the ROW mainline. This means bunching where in the prior mode there wasn't any and people hate bunching "I waited 20 minutes and three buses came at once - why when this is supposed to separate from traffic". Also, it would only work where the existing ROW had capacity in both stops and lanes to accept more buses.

One issue which tends to favour buses and busways is whether emergency services can use them - that can be tricky in light rail or trolleybus scenarios because of the poles supporting the power line, especially if single centre poles are used instead of side poles. It's usually easier to allow buses to overtake in an express scenario too with either a double lane at the stop or a reversible single express lane (tidal flow).

The main thing is that when demand projections are made that the basis for those projections is open to scrutiny. Let's face it, if the bureaucrats who drew the crayon line for Metro West knew they'd have to justify it on the basis of pphpd and modal shift they'd never have put it in T21. A busway on an orbital road might have been the best solution there but how would the RPA expand its empire when it doesn't run buses?

There are plenty of demand models where busways fit nicely - small stop distances, lots of grade intersections, ability to divert required etc. but Irish transport policy doesn't get made on that basis, it gets made based on what politicians demand and it's got to stop.

mgmt

Zoney wrote: »

Having seen the mess in Cambridge as they build a guided busway, it doesn't seem sensible to spend so much just on buses. With light rail you have a lot more to show for the efforts, and you can carry a lot of people.

The Cambridge Busway is opening next week. It will be interesting to see if it will be a success. It certainly has got bad press so far.

CIE

I haven't been super-keen on busways even after discovering them. Their maintenance is far greater than that of a comparative railway, and the drainage is far more troublesome. Perhaps shared busways are all right (i.e. with light rail), e.g. Pittsburgh's South Busway (upper pic)...sure would make sense to do this with some of the "trams only" sections of Luas' Red Line (e.g. behind the Four Courts); see below.

One thing that paved busways are good for is as a route for emergency vehicles (e.g. fire brigade, ambulance, guards)...

baalthor

The original DART plan from the 70s featured a dedicated busway from the city centre to Dundrum which I presume is now the LUAS green line ...

mgmt

baalthor wrote: »

The original DART plan from the 70s featured a dedicated busway from the city centre to Dundrum which I presume is now the LUAS green line ...

invinciblePRSTV

we might be seeing them in Cork at some point in the future as an east -west BRT trail was identified as the optimal option by planners a couple of years ago in their report on PT needs in the metro area.

Rather a light rail line myself.

antoinolachtnai

You could do some great busway projects in Dublin with a bit of planning and careful thought. It really would suit the layout of the outer suburbs and there are suitable corridors there which could be developed with a bit of planning and forethought.

There is no question that road space in the city centre is a big factor, but this is an unavoidable issue no matter what you do. There will never be as much space as you like in the inner city.

But road congestion charging is on the way anyhow, so you need to use this to get the road space that is needed. Integrated ticketing should also give back some road space at peak times, if it has reasonable take-up.

mgmt

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

There is no question that road space in the city centre is a big factor, but this is an unavoidable issue no matter what you do. There will never be as much space as you like in the inner city.

But road congestion charging is on the way anyhow, so you need to use this to get the road space that is needed. Integrated ticketing should also give back some road space at peak times, if it has reasonable take-up.

Perhaps a guided busway using the red luas line could be looked at. The buses could be guided using optic lines. Would be suitable for a busway coming from Lucan or down Blackhorse Avenue.

antoinolachtnai

On the Luas line in the city centre? No, that won't really work. There would be nowhere for the buses to stop without blocking the luas. (Overtaking performance is not great in Luas trams.) You wouldn't really save any time either, with trams in the way.

mgmt

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

On the Luas line in the city centre? No, that won't really work. There would be nowhere for the buses to stop without blocking the luas. (Overtaking performance is not great in Luas trams.) You wouldn't really save any time either, with trams in the way.

They would use the same stops as the Luas. The optical guidance means they would be flush with the Luas stops. Here is a similar system, although not on a tram line:



edit:

Sheffield might do this idea

Proposals also include an optical guidance concept vehicle able to run on both traditional roads and the tram network, with potential already identified for a service linking Manor Top and Sheffield city centre. Similar technology is already in use elsewhere in mainland Europe.
http://www.stagecoachbus.com/pressreleasesdetails.aspx?Id=383

antoinolachtnai

That is easy enough to do. The problem is that if a bus is unloading passengers at the platform, the luas behind it will have to wait before it can get access to the platform.This will cause the luas to miss the traffic light cycle and delay it by 2 minutes or longer.

markpb

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

That is easy enough to do. The problem is that if a bus is unloading passengers at the platform, the luas behind it will have to wait before it can get access to the platform.This will cause the luas to miss the traffic light cycle and delay it by 2 minutes or longer.

This sums up why the decision to ban DB from using Luas lines was 100% correct. Having a DB bus pull up to the stop, unload all its passengers through one door, load all its new passengers through the same one door and then dispense both tickets and fare information from the driver while the a Luas sitting behind can do all that in a fraction of the time would be ridiculous.

mgmt

markpb wrote: »

This sums up why the decision to ban DB from using Luas lines was 100% correct. Having a DB bus pull up to the stop, unload all its passengers through one door, load all its new passengers through the same one door and then dispense both tickets and fare information from the driver while the a Luas sitting behind can do all that in a fraction of the time would be ridiculous.

You wouldn't use the dumb, archaic Dublin Bus operation . Something like the Blue Line buses.

http://www.blueline.ie/

antoinolachtnai

You can use any type of bus you like, but it will not work. You cannot have the bus picking up and setting down on a line shared with light rail. The platforms will instantly become congested and both services will be far slower than the bus lane along the quays. There are some places where shared running would make sense but this is not one of them.

dowlingm

I think there might be scope for all-door bus and light rail sharing - but in the OUTER parts of the lines where service is less frequent due to turnbacks. Once the bus reached the inner parts of the line where there is more frequency, it could take off in a different direction rather than follow the rail alignment, either via another route into town or an orbital path.

Ottawa is a good example of where busways outgrew themselves, because eventually they have to inject themselves into mixed traffic in the city centres. Now they are building an underground light rail tunnel at massive cost to relieve the situation.

mgmt

Here is a picture of the proposal in Sheffield



Perhaps a good use for this system would be a BRT to the airport and Swords using the Port Tunnel and using the Luas line from BusAras to the O2.

CIE

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

You can use any type of bus you like, but it will not work. You cannot have the bus picking up and setting down on a line shared with light rail. The platforms will instantly become congested and both services will be far slower than the bus lane along the quays. There are some places where shared running would make sense but this is not one of them

What makes you assume that? All boils down to proper timetabling.

Or is one of the concerns over bus dwell time due to lack of entrances on the bus combined with OPO fare payment...?

antoinolachtnai

There is no timetabling you can do to make this work, even if you could timetable buses and trams down to the nearest twenty seconds, which you can't.

The problem is magnified by the traffic signals. If you introduce even a fairly small delay to the trams, you will slow them down disproportionately and cause bunching. Trams on the inner city part of the red line are severely restricted and slowed down by the traffic light pattern as it is.

CIE

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

There is no timetabling you can do to make this work, even if you could timetable buses and trams down to the nearest twenty seconds, which you can't

Why can't you?

And why are you thinking that a shared bus/LRT corridor would be hosting 180 vehicles per hour in a particular direction (which is one vehicle every twenty seconds)? The busiest the Luas Red Line gets is 20 trams per hour in peak direction (and it's usually less busy most of the day); you aren't going to suddenly have 160 buses joining them in the instance of a shared bus/tram corridor.

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

The problem is magnified by the traffic signals. If you introduce even a fairly small delay to the trams, you will slow them down disproportionately and cause bunching. Trams on the inner city part of the red line are severely restricted and slowed down by the traffic light pattern as it is

So what happened to signal pre-emption...? That was supposed to be part of the QBCs way back in the 1990s, and it was also supposed to be part of the Luas operations IINM.

antoinolachtnai

By signal pre-emption you mean changing the signals? That won't work in the city centre, because you will break the sequence of lights for the whole city, and the north-south traffic will no longer be able to move smoothly.

The reason you would need to be able to timetable to the nearest 20 seconds is because

- the rush hour is only 60 minutes long. Every light cycle is 2 minutes long (or so).

That means that there is actually only 30 minutes of time east-west, assuming north-south and east-west get equal priority.

This means that 20 trams per hour means that there is actually a tram every 1.5 minutes of east-west time.

If you put an extra 20 buses on there, then you have a vehicle passing on average every 45 seconds of east-west time.

This is very dense. It means that you have at least a bus and a tram in each direction in every east-west section of track (by a section I mean the piece of track between traffic junctions.

But that could be fine. If that were the only issue, we could get over it. But there is the further problem of the stops and platforms. If a bus stops in front of a tram, the tram cannot get by.

If this delays the tram by 30 seconds, it will mean the the train behind it will bunch up behind it. This bunching will continue along the whole east/west corridor.

So why not timetable it exactly, so buses never get in the way of trams like this?

You cannot timetable so exactly, because you (a) don't know how many passengers will be on the buses or trams, which will have a bearing on the dwell time and journey time and (b) you cannot time exactly when the bus, or for that matter, the tram, will arrive at the shared Luas/BRT line.

You really need to do shared running on sections where there are no stops or stations.

CIE

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

By signal pre-emption you mean changing the signals? That won't work in the city centre, because you will break the sequence of lights for the whole city, and the north-south traffic will no longer be able to move smoothly.

The reason you would need to be able to timetable to the nearest 20 seconds is because

- the rush hour is only 60 minutes long. Every light cycle is 2 minutes long (or so).

That means that there is actually only 30 minutes of time east-west, assuming north-south and east-west get equal priority.

This means that 20 trams per hour means that there is actually a tram every 1.5 minutes of east-west time.

If you put an extra 20 buses on there, then you have a vehicle passing on average every 45 seconds of east-west time.

This is very dense. It means that you have at least a bus and a tram in each direction in every east-west section of track (by a section I mean the piece of track between traffic junctions.

But that could be fine. If that were the only issue, we could get over it. But there is the further problem of the stops and platforms. If a bus stops in front of a tram, the tram cannot get by.

If this delays the tram by 30 seconds, it will mean the the train behind it will bunch up behind it. This bunching will continue along the whole east/west corridor.

So why not timetable it exactly, so buses never get in the way of trams like this?

You cannot timetable so exactly, because you (a) don't know how many passengers will be on the buses or trams, which will have a bearing on the dwell time and journey time and (b) you cannot time exactly when the bus, or for that matter, the tram, will arrive at the shared Luas/BRT line.

You really need to do shared running on sections where there are no stops or stations.

You seem to be inflating the scenario. Not all bus routes would be assigned to the shared route; that would infuriate passengers that are used to using current parallel arteries for local service. If a bus is stopping at a shared station, the tram would also be stopping there anyhow and the bus ahead would clear the road ahead after the tram is done loading/unloading; or if that turns out to be such a large concern, then it shouldn't be a big thing to build a passing loading bay for the buses at stations that would allow trams to pass. There's also the added advantage of no cars or lorries getting in the way, you know, no congestion except of course at cross streets or other such obstacles, and trams would have to deal with this anyway.

LXFlyer

Discussing this in the context of the LUAS red line route in the city centre is pointless.

The buses are currently faster than the trams from Heuston to O'Connell Bridge due to the continuous bus lanes. Why would you want to slow them down due to having to stop behind trams at the stops?

CIE

lxflyer wrote: »

Discussing this in the context of the LUAS red line route in the city centre is pointless.

The buses are currently faster than the trams from Heuston to O'Connell Bridge due to the continuous bus lanes. Why would you want to slow them down due to having to stop behind trams at the stops?

That's because of how the trams are operated more than anything else, though.

And besides, there are a few discontinuities in these "lána bus lanes", especially at junctions with the bridges.

LXFlyer

CIE wrote: »

That's because of how the trams are operated more than anything else, though.

And besides, there are a few discontinuities in these "lána bus lanes", especially at junctions with the bridges.

There are very few discontinuities (as a daily user of that route I can tell you) that cause any disruption.

This whole idea is as I said above irrelevant in the context of the quays. The current system works very well - why change it?

antoinolachtnai

The parallel bus corridor on Dame St also seems to be pretty fast.

monument

The problem with BRT is not in most cases that there isn't the space, but for it to work right, it requires a large transfer of road space away from cars.

Much of Dublin's bus and cycle lane network becomes extra lanes or car parking outside of peak hours. A surprising amount of people actually respect (or don't know about) out of hours bus lanes.

BRT (and also light rail such as Luas) would best be in the middle of many roads and segregated -- this makes it hard for parking or loading kerbside without blocking traffic lanes or footpaths. Better enforcement would be needed and better planning on deliveries.

Watching city council debates about it can be strange -- even in areas around and inside the canals where a comparably low amount of people drive some councillors fight tooth and nail about keeping operational hours of bus lanes low for use as parking at the local shops. Even look at the College Green bus gate saga.

And there's a host of questions: Like is there room for BRT, normal traffic lanes and cyclists? Can BRT operate with taxies and if not how much opposition with drivers kick up? (I'm guessing they can do a lot of disruption given their out of control numbers and the apparent desperation from many of them).

Don't get me wrong I'd be supportive of BRT, high priority on-street Luas, or even just higher priority QBCs (there's loads of scope for more bus gates in the city centre for example), I'm just pointing out that there is strong opposition and the councils and others are often not very good at putting forward plans or defending them. And some councillors and TDs can be very easily be caught up in believing that there is only opposition.

antoinolachtnai

This is why you need the road authority and public transport functions to be integrated.

CIE

lxflyer wrote: »

There are very few discontinuities (as a daily user of that route I can tell you) that cause any disruption.

This whole idea is as I said above irrelevant in the context of the quays. The current system works very well - why change it?

Didn't say "change it"; but supplementing it isn't a bad idea in and of itself.