Guided Busways

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KeithW
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by KeithW »

With regard to the Cambridge Metro plan of interest may be the survey on tunnelling costs made for the HS2 scheme.

Given the high water table of the region its likely that a slurry type tunnelling machine would be needed. The costs for a twin track tunnel work out at around £490 million for a 7 km tunnel. This just covers the tunnelling costs not the building of stations, fitting out and purchasing the trains.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... _Costs.pdf

Looking at other cities experience the Toronto system cost $400 million per mile while in Baltimore the light rail system was a bargain at $200 million per mile. Of course in the UK you had better allow several years just for the consultation and approvals phase and I doubt the Cambridge colleges will be very keen let alone English Heritage. There are 67 grade 1 listed buildings in Cambridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_I_l ... _Cambridge

Time to revisit the monorail idea perhaps :)
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someone
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by someone »

roadtester wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 11:09Interesting - would this be the first of its type or is there a similar autonomous/part autonomous system running anywhere else already?
In Castellón they use the optical technology to drive a trollybus (Google Translated wikipedia page), the French systems mentioned only use it around bus stops.

For further reading, a report on the Rouen system:

http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/tc ... /Rouen.pdf

Some P.R. sheets for the technology:

https://www.kontron.com/downloads/appli ... ide_en.pdf

http://www.egalite.fr/public/siemens/Fi ... 202015.pdf

And a few-years-old web page which has a lot of detail on the success and failure of the system, which "was also proposed that Cambridge might use" as part of its busway "when travelling on the public highway."

I have not seen anything to say the new proposal will use that Siemens system, mind. Last year Stagecoach began trialing autonomous buses. They had a partnership with Siemens over a decade ago to develop the technology for use in the U.K., but they are were mentioned in any of the press releases for the trial.

The proposed scale of the Cambridge network would be unique. One of its biggest selling points was that it was by far the most cost effective option. In large part because the vehicle designs allow for smaller diameter tunnels than a rail based system. This is the most significant cost in any proposal as tunnelling is seen as the only option for the city centre.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by Herned »

I had a look at the consultation report for the proposed Cambridge scheme which I was sceptical about but it does make a lot of sense. The system will be able to serve a much wider area than a rail-based system so the benefits are spread more widely. It does seem a little bit weird to go for optical guidance rather than continuing with the existing guided system though, seems to add an unnecessary risk to the project
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by camflyer »

mikehindsonevans wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:05 Which brings us, sadly, right round and back to the lack of road space within Cambridge, inside the reach of the excellent Guided Busway.
Indeed. Even if you banned all traffic inside the city centre, it's hard to see how you could get buses/trams down Kings Parade, Trinity St or Sidney St and through the market square while still having pedestrians around.
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the cheesecake man
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by the cheesecake man »

camflyer wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 13:29
mikehindsonevans wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:05 Which brings us, sadly, right round and back to the lack of road space within Cambridge, inside the reach of the excellent Guided Busway.
Indeed. Even if you banned all traffic inside the city centre, it's hard to see how you could get buses/trams down Kings Parade, Trinity St or Sidney St and through the market square while still having pedestrians around.
You could if you were really determined to:
  • Nottingham has trams narrower than normal with more bendy bits to negotiate some tight bends and narrow streets
  • Croydon sends trams down a narrow high street with a one-way system
  • The city centre shuttle bus used Trinity Street and Kings Parade when it was otherwise closed and full of pedestrians
  • The open top bus tours Trinity Street, Market Hill and Sidney Street after 4pm and on Sundays
  • Amsterdam trams use gauntlet track to cope with narrow streets
But
  • Constricting the vehicles in such a way would restrict capacity
  • The city centre shuttle bus was painfully slow and always had a flotilla of cyclists stuck behind it
  • Vibrations from large vehicles passing so close to old buildings is bad (as York Minster for example has found)
  • Demolition of historic buildings, especially somewhere dominated by tourists, is not attractive
  • The university has many friends in high places if any of its property is threatened with demolition
So it would be a really really really really bad idea.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by M4 Cardiff »

Actually the substrata in Cambridge would be decent for tunnelling, as the 'bedrock' strata is a material called Gault Clay. This material is waterproof and self-supporting in the short term, hence like the London Clay, through which a number of the London tube lines are built, tunnel construction is unlikely to be too difficult. The shallow water table is 'perched' in the overlying materials. Groundwater management should only be required at portals and at stations, however a caisson-type construction, keyed into the underlying Gault Clay should result in relatively simple construction and groundwater management.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by roadtester »

The Cambourne to Cambridge busway has now become bogged down even further:

https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/l ... e-18430046
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c2R
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by c2R »

Something that I've noticed during the pandemic is that the combined foot and cycleway between Trumpington and Addenbrooke's Hospital now has more use than ever - this is obviously both as a result of the pandemic itself and people not wanting to sit in buses, but also because of all the new car-free development that is occurring around the busway route. Obviously, this is a good thing.

However... it's becoming increasingly apparent that the shared space for bicycles and people is at capacity during peak hours (probably coinciding with start/finish of shifts at the hospital) - the problem really is with the busway tracks themselves taking up a lot of space that could otherwise be shared bus and cycle lanes. Or perhaps the problem is in not making separate pedestrian space from the cycle lanes. On a lot of this part of the route there is space to do this - but it just hasn't been done.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1730868 ... 312!8i6656

This part of Cambridge is quite frustrating in a way, because there's a lot right about what's being done here in terms of planning strategy creating lots of medium density residential accommodation around community centres/gardens/parks - but also a lot wrong with missed opportunities for better access to the hospital site from the motorway, and the lack of provision of a proper southern bypass. In addition to this, the Trumpington P&R site is being rapidly surrounded by houses, meaning that the crazy situation now exists where hospital staff park for free in a giant car park in what is becoming a residential area instead of parking on the hospital site itself as that costs money....
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by darkcape »

Shared bus & cycle lanes are generally being discouraged, cyclists are vulnerable users and shouldn't be mixed with large vehicles such as buses. In your Streetview link I'm struggling to see where there's extra space to widen the path, as it look like the path is within a metre of the property boundary on the left?

Leicester has widened several shared paths from 3 to 4m due to increased usage in the pandemic. Agree with your comments regarding wider transport in the Trumpington area though.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by c2R »

darkcape wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 09:45 Shared bus & cycle lanes are generally being discouraged, cyclists are vulnerable users and shouldn't be mixed with large vehicles such as buses. In your Streetview link I'm struggling to see where there's extra space to widen the path, as it look like the path is within a metre of the property boundary on the left?

Leicester has widened several shared paths from 3 to 4m due to increased usage in the pandemic. Agree with your comments regarding wider transport in the Trumpington area though.
Agree that cyclists are more vulnerable than buses - but in the same way the children that live in the houses that open out onto the cyclepath are more vulnerable than the cyclists - not to mention the all sorts of other weird and wonderful users of the cycleway... A guy travelling at speed on one of these seemed particularly hazardous! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owlB85rqcQM

Anyway, now that it's built, I'd currently put a second path to the right of the busway. Appreciate that it's not possible to do that closer to the Trumpingon P&R site because the old railway is in a cutting, but it could be done between here and the hospital, with reduction of the busway to alternate flows where it crosses the railway line to provide the extra width.

Hopefully lessons will be learned from this busway experiment to improve things for future designs - it's still all much better than sprawling low density car dependent boxes.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by Herned »

Shared paths really are a very bad idea, once they get to a certain volume of traffic. Proper segregation between pedestrians and cyclists is the only sensible answer, with a kerb ideally. Getting it right first time will only save money later and encourage more people to use the facility.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by Bryn666 »

Herned wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:18 Shared paths really are a very bad idea, once they get to a certain volume of traffic. Proper segregation between pedestrians and cyclists is the only sensible answer, with a kerb ideally. Getting it right first time will only save money later and encourage more people to use the facility.
I was half expecting the ex-A14 to be given the A74 treatment with a view to having a cycling superhighway type link between Cambridge and Huntingdon - especially given Bar Hill is a car dependent disaster, but it appears all that's being done is a totally rubbish 3m path alongside the eastbound carriageway.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by c2R »

Bryn666 wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:28
Herned wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:18 Shared paths really are a very bad idea, once they get to a certain volume of traffic. Proper segregation between pedestrians and cyclists is the only sensible answer, with a kerb ideally. Getting it right first time will only save money later and encourage more people to use the facility.
I was half expecting the ex-A14 to be given the A74 treatment with a view to having a cycling superhighway type link between Cambridge and Huntingdon - especially given Bar Hill is a car dependent disaster, but it appears all that's being done is a totally rubbish 3m path alongside the eastbound carriageway.
There is already a cycle superhighway link between Cambridge and Huntingdon alongside the busway: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2630501 ... 376!8i2688

In rural areas, this seems fairly adequate - it's only in the city itself where the cycles then mix in the shared space with everything else it isn't....
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by Bryn666 »

c2R wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:44
Bryn666 wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:28
Herned wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:18 Shared paths really are a very bad idea, once they get to a certain volume of traffic. Proper segregation between pedestrians and cyclists is the only sensible answer, with a kerb ideally. Getting it right first time will only save money later and encourage more people to use the facility.
I was half expecting the ex-A14 to be given the A74 treatment with a view to having a cycling superhighway type link between Cambridge and Huntingdon - especially given Bar Hill is a car dependent disaster, but it appears all that's being done is a totally rubbish 3m path alongside the eastbound carriageway.
There is already a cycle superhighway link between Cambridge and Huntingdon alongside the busway: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2630501 ... 376!8i2688

In rural areas, this seems fairly adequate - it's only in the city itself where the cycles then mix in the shared space with everything else it isn't....
Mmmyes, but as you say, that's rural - it doesn't really serve Huntingdon, Godmanchester, Fenstanton, Lolworth, Bar Hill, etc. It does serve St Ives and Swavesey very well, but for anyone else, you're still going to drive down that giant bypassed dual carriageway that is currently very quiet.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by solocle »

Bryn666 wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:50
c2R wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:44
Bryn666 wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:28

I was half expecting the ex-A14 to be given the A74 treatment with a view to having a cycling superhighway type link between Cambridge and Huntingdon - especially given Bar Hill is a car dependent disaster, but it appears all that's being done is a totally rubbish 3m path alongside the eastbound carriageway.
There is already a cycle superhighway link between Cambridge and Huntingdon alongside the busway: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2630501 ... 376!8i2688

In rural areas, this seems fairly adequate - it's only in the city itself where the cycles then mix in the shared space with everything else it isn't....
Mmmyes, but as you say, that's rural - it doesn't really serve Huntingdon, Godmanchester, Fenstanton, Lolworth, Bar Hill, etc. It does serve St Ives and Swavesey very well, but for anyone else, you're still going to drive down that giant bypassed dual carriageway that is currently very quiet.
It wasn't exactly a superhighway link when I was riding an audax (Bristol-Cambridge-Bristol) at the end of 2019. The sodding thing was flooded!

Having a look at a map, I plotted a route along the A1307, and figured that the recently detrunked former A14 would be quite pleasant and quiet.

I was right about the A1307, albeit I did get beeped at once by a passing motorist (who was entirely in lane 2...). The problem was that the section between Bar Hill and Swavesey simply didn't exist...

The legal option was to ride on the new A14, as the restrictions hadn't yet been put into force, because the LAR wasn't complete. As it was, I was leading a small group, and while I may have gone that way solo... instead we ignored the road closure signs, I nearly ran into a gigantic mound of gravel at the end of lovely smooth tarmac, then we hiked our bikes onto a coned off part of the new roadway. Then contraflowed up a live slip road for about 50m to get to from the end of the cones to a line of cones on the other side (no cars came down in that time, and there was a good line of sight up to the roundabout).
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by owen b »

owen b wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 21:43
Berk wrote: Mon Nov 11, 2019 21:35 Does it climb the hill (to the airport), or do you need to change buses??
No it doesn't. DART is currently under construction to take people from Luton Parkway railway station to the airport : https://dart.llal.org.uk/ described as "The £225m Luton DART (Direct Air-Rail Transit) will speed travellers from Luton Airport Parkway station to the terminal of London Luton Airport in well under four minutes." The A505 is currently badly affected by works to install the over bridge for the link.
Luton DART opens this week :
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by Big L »

Geoff has done a video.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by fras »

And, of course, it is not a guided busway, (the title of this thread !), a la Cambridge.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by owen b »

fras wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 11:11 And, of course, it is not a guided busway, (the title of this thread !), a la Cambridge.
Point taken. The reasons I put it on this thread are because a) it connects with the Luton - Dunstable guided busway; b) I didn't think it merited its own thread.

After all these years I still haven't used the Luton - Dunstable busway or even the parallel cycle path, and despite the half price concessionary fare on offer to Luton residents I don't anticipate using DART anytime soon either. It does look like quite a nice ride though, particularly the bridge over the A1081 and the view from it.

One point is that Luton Airport Parkway station is at about 110m above sea level, and the airport terminal is at about 155m above sea level, so a difference of 45 metres in only about a mile as the crow flies (so that's about a 3% gradient assuming a straight line). The DART terminal at Parkway is one level above the railway, whereas the DART terminal at the airport is underground, so presumably this is at least in part to facilitate an easier gradient.
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Re: Guided Busways

Post by roadtester »

owen b wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 13:24
fras wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 11:11 And, of course, it is not a guided busway, (the title of this thread !), a la Cambridge.
Point taken. The reasons I put it on this thread are because a) it connects with the Luton - Dunstable guided busway; b) I didn't think it merited its own thread.

After all these years I still haven't used the Luton - Dunstable busway or even the parallel cycle path, and despite the half price concessionary fare on offer to Luton residents I don't anticipate using DART anytime soon either. It does look like quite a nice ride though, particularly the bridge over the A1081 and the view from it.

One point is that Luton Airport Parkway station is at about 110m above sea level, and the airport terminal is at about 155m above sea level, so a difference of 45 metres in only about a mile as the crow flies (so that's about a 3% gradient assuming a straight line). The DART terminal at Parkway is one level above the railway, whereas the DART terminal at the airport is underground, so presumably this is at least in part to facilitate an easier gradient.
From the video posted by Big L it looks really good, although the standalone price of £4.99 looks slightly high to me. But that might just be because I’m a bit of a tight wad.
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