NI: Bus lanes on motorways

[c2R]

Guaranteed parking at Sprucefield vs driving around for 90 minutes finding a cheap space in a city centre should do the trick.

Indeed; and it's free - if it wasn't successful then they wouldn't have just increased the spaces by about 25%....

[booshank]

Interesting that they are hard shoulder bus lanes. The only motorway bus lane I've seen before is in South Africa and is next to the central reservation.

[c2R]

The M4 bus lane was in the centre too.

I suppose it make junctions slightly more complicated, but use of the hard shoulder does have the advantage that the bus does not need to move across both lanes of traffic to enter it, when it is likely that there will be a speed differential, or access to the bus lane will be blocked by queued vehicles.

[AndyB]

Yes. In NI, the setup is as follows:-

M1
J8 - off and on (via P&R)
J7 - bus lane ends for onslip, starts again beyond
J6 - bus lane ends before offslip, starts again beyond onslip
Services - bus lane becomes offslip and has priority, bus lane then continues along mainline and services go left. At the north end, the services onslip merges into the bus lane (which has priority) and kicker arrows boot them back into Lane 1 shortly thereafter.
J3 - bus lane ends before onslip
J2 - bus lane starts after onslip
J1 - bus lane goes off

M2
J4 - off and on, then ends (at least one bridge prevents the lane continuing)
J2 - starts after onslip
J1 - off and on
J1a - off

Off and on has a bus gate at the respective roundabout except M1 J8.

The advantage of nearside bus lanes is that firstly, the extra land take is minimal - the worst that can happen is that the hard shoulder needs to be strengthened or widened; secondly, there is no loss of space to general moving traffic; and thirdly, as a slower vehicle, it is easy to return to Lane 1, especially if (as in NI) the normal running lanes are NSL.

[Bryn666]

The M90 bus lane southbound followed the NI model too, complete with advisory 40 limit.

[AndyB]

NI is actually pretty good on the whole - it's essentially pragmatic, and that makes for good results in signage, especially since DfI Roads authorises its own non-TSR signs.

It's not perfect, and I've seen plenty of bad designs, especially on schemes with outside (GB?) consultants who ought to know better but whose designs have been incorrectly signed off by DfI staff.