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BRT: the time is right

Posted: 18 August 2008 | John Carr, Secretary, BRTuk | No comments yet

In Runcorn in the UK and Almere in the Netherlands, new towns have been functioning for several decades with their transport needs based around largely segregated, highly reliable bus services. In common with other public transport the fortunes of these systems may have fluctuated with investment levels and institutional changes, but both communities enjoy high levels of access and relatively low congestion. Tales from the Americas and Australasia trumpet the success of Bus Rapid Transit systems in communities with a wide spread of social and economic conditions. The unsung busways in Runcorn and Almere point the way here in Europe to what might be achieved with bus based rapid transit solutions.

In Runcorn in the UK and Almere in the Netherlands, new towns have been functioning for several decades with their transport needs based around largely segregated, highly reliable bus services. In common with other public transport the fortunes of these systems may have fluctuated with investment levels and institutional changes, but both communities enjoy high levels of access and relatively low congestion. Tales from the Americas and Australasia trumpet the success of Bus Rapid Transit systems in communities with a wide spread of social and economic conditions. The unsung busways in Runcorn and Almere point the way here in Europe to what might be achieved with bus based rapid transit solutions.

In Runcorn in the UK and Almere in the Netherlands, new towns have been functioning for several decades with their transport needs based around largely segregated, highly reliable bus services. In common with other public transport the fortunes of these systems may have fluctuated with investment levels and institutional changes, but both communities enjoy high levels of access and relatively low congestion. Tales from the Americas and Australasia trumpet the success of Bus Rapid Transit systems in communities with a wide spread of social and economic conditions. The unsung busways in Runcorn and Almere point the way here in Europe to what might be achieved with bus based rapid transit solutions.

The early years of the 21st century for many UK transport planners and operators in the major conurbations and beyond have been a time of frustration. Whilst there is widespread recognition that car use has to be moderated, funds have not been made available by Central Government for LRT systems in Leeds, Liverpool and South Hampshire, whilst expansion of the highly successful Manchester Metrolink and Nottingham NET systems has been hard won and depends on innovative funding. Similarly, English cities with successful commuter rail networks are battling with full trains and full tracks with little opportunity in the short to medium term for investment to increase capacity through either infrastructure investment or new rolling stock. Significantly, where there is devolved government, in London, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the situation is rather different with more investment and political attention focussed on improving transport in and around their cities.

The credit crunch, climate change and the impact of peak oil increase public awareness that greater use of public transport is necessary. However, many appear to believe that acceptable alternatives to the car are not widely available because the majority mode, the bus, is not as well understood by non-users as rail based systems and suffers from the same congestion and reliability problems as other road traffic. Major strides have been made by progressive authorities and operators working in partnership to improve bus performance through quality partnerships and this concept is embraced and developed in recent British legislation. The way forward has to be a combination of measures to increase awareness of alternatives to the car and to change behaviour by proving that those alternatives supported by targeted investment can deliver effective and reliable public transport.

Bus Rapid Transit

Bus Rapid Transit is being seen as an increasingly important tool in the transport planning toolkit. BRTuk is the association of authorities, operators, suppliers and constructors, formed in 2006, dedicated to the sharing of information about evolving bus based rubber tyred rapid transit technology. Taking the bus and its infrastructure and promoting them as a system rather than as a disparate collection of routes within the general highway network is an essential feature that distinguishes BRT in their definition: “A flexible, frequent, dependable bus transit system that combines a variety of physical and operating elements into a permanent and integrated system with a quality image and a unique identity”.

The busway operations in Almere, where the system is now marketed as ‘the Maxx’ by its operator Connexxion, perhaps now fits the BRTuk definition. Being British, Runcorn certainly combines the physical and operating features, demonstrating flexibility with some services operating around the permanent busway and continuing as inter-urban services as far as Liverpool over 20 miles away, but failing – despite the best efforts of the local authority and main operators to improve their own elements – to pass the integration, quality and image tests. Nevertheless, these two examples, both deliberately planned into their new town infrastructures, show ‘BRT principles’ working quietly and effectively in Almere for almost thirty years and in Runcorn for slightly longer.

Why less BRT in Europe?

Most European towns and cities of course have developed around historic cores and do not enjoy the space availability that some of the cities with successful BRT systems in the Americas and Australia do. Perhaps also they have lacked the political vision and commitment to adopt radical solutions involving reallocation of roadspace or difficult planning and construction phases, or maybe the politicians just could not believe that buses could deliver the permanence of the generally preferred municipal solution of LRT (which paradoxically requires much the same set of decisions!). For a variety of reasons, there are relatively few ‘complete’ BRT systems operating in Europe, although some very striking uses of quality bus solutions do demonstrate many of the characteristics of BRT. Such solutions include the kerb guided busways (KGBs) in Essen, Bradford and Leeds. It is particularly noteworthy that the West Edinburgh KGB, having successfully demonstrated in its short life the reliability advantages that segregation brings, is now to be incorporated in the first phase of the new Edinburgh Tram network: opportunities to move from BRT to LRT to increase capacity have often been claimed as an example of BRT’s flexibility.

So where in the UK and mainland Europe should we look to see where BRT is being used to the full and how it is performing?

Starting in Europe, perhaps the stand out systems are in France and in the Netherlands. In France, BRT systems have principally been adopted as a high capacity, high performance mode where demand or cost did not justify investment in LRT – a mantra familiar to several cities in the UK! A variety of interesting options have evolved, ranging from those with heavy fixed infrastructure including overhead power supplies and guide rails, to those where innovative approaches to traffic management allow essentially conventional, but high quality, buses significant advantages over other traffic through the use of segregation, priority lanes, traffic signal priorities and (importantly) many use tramway style signalling to clearly differentiate permitted BRT movements from other traffic using the same intersections. Passenger facilities also have a quality feel through the use of distinctive designs for items such as waiting shelters and information cases complemented in mostly by locality maps, real-time information and self-service ticketing, now increasingly adding contactless smartcards to the magnetic ticketing used in many European cities. Integration with conventional bus and tram/LRT services is taken as the norm. All of these features combine neatly to satisfy the BRTuk definition: “A flexible, frequent, dependable bus transit system that combines a variety of physical and operating elements into a permanent and integrated system with a quality image and a unique identity”. The French, however, prefer the more prosaic term BHNS (Bus à Haut Niveau de Service – Bus with a High Level of Service)!

Rubber-tyred trams?

The most heavily engineered French system is the Translohr “tramway on tires”, opened in 2004 in Clermont-Ferrand (home of Michelin tyres!). The vehicles are entirely dependent both on the single guidance rail (with proprietary engagement system between vehicle and rail) and on the overhead power supply delivered through a pantograph to the articulated vehicle. Apart from the rubber-tired carrying wheels running on normal road surfaces and all steered through interaction with the track, the vehicles look more like trams than buses. This really is the crossover point between buses and trams and remains unique in France. It is probably the case that this particular ‘tramway on tires’ will have limited application because of its high cost and proprietary nature.

Looking remarkably similar to the Translohr system, but with more inherent flexibility, is the Bombardier GLT (Guided Light Transit) found in the French cities of Caen and Nancy. These are electrically powered vehicles with overhead supply and a central single guidance rail, but in this case, the vehicle simply follows the rail which thus confines it to a narrow path where the rail is present. When taken off the guideway, the vehicle can move under its own auxiliary power and be driven like a large articulated bus. In Nancy, the GLT looks like a trolley-bus as it has twin trolley poles with current return through the overhead, whereas in Caen, the vehicles carry pantographs and use the guidance rail for current return. Movement off the guideway here is currently restricted to transfers to and from the maintenance and storage depot. During a recent BRTuk visit to Caen (population 113,000), perhaps the most striking messages were the popularity of the system, the advantages of road tyred traction over steel wheel on steel rail in climbing steep hills and the sensitive way in which, despite the heavy infrastructure, GLT had been designed into the city. Something of this is shown in the illustration of the franchise operator (branded Twisto) GLT in the city centre of Caen.

If cost reductions were the aim of these systems, the proponents will be disappointed as in capital costs they are little different to conventional tramways and in operating costs may well be slightly higher, for example wear on the road surfaces is high leading to localised rutting due to the tight control the guide rail exerts over the path of each vehicle. Both Translohr and GLT systems have experienced significant teething problems and their proprietary in nature probably means they will not find many customers. Nevertheless, they should not be dismissed as irrelevant as in each case their design and integration into the urban fabric show how attractive and popular with users modern guided systems can be.

Rouen’s TEOR Optically Guided buses

Moving from Caen to its near neighbour Rouen, the BRT system is definitely more ‘buslike’. Rouen, in a conurbation of 400,000, boasts two LRT lines together with three partly optically guided BRT routes crossing the city from East to West (TEOR). BRT, rather than LRT, was selected for TEOR by the Rouen authorities partly because of more diverse settlement patterns where the flexibility of buses to branch out from the main corridors was seen as advantageous and partly because of geography including steep grades in the valley of the Seine. Both the conurbation authorities and the operator, Veolia subsidiary TCAR, have worked hard to deliver as much as possible from a system that is essentially buses running for much of their routes on public roads. Space is at a premium especially in the older parts of the city and here optical guidance comes into its own, threading buses through priority lanes in minimum space whilst continuing to accommodate essential local traffic and even well-disciplined roadside parking. To UK eyes, some of the use of road space is very highly innovative – such as reversing the direction of priority in the middle of a street to give buses in both directions maximum advantage in approaching their next junctions.

Rouen initially proposed to use the Civis concept bus as the TEOR vehicle but teething problems with the first two led to a rethink with the tried and tested – and very conventionally styled! – Renault Agora being used in the expansion to full service. This step back from modern styling does not appear to have had a great impact on patronage and in particular the out-of-town park and ride sites are well used, contributing significant numbers of car drivers to the 7.5 million estimated passenger journeys per year. The key lessons of Rouen are that the self-powered bus has unique flexibility, combining that with guidance and innovative traffic management so that services operate as efficiently as possible in an uncongested environment delivers impressive patronage and high passenger satisfaction.

The BusWay of Nantes

Finally from France, BRTuk were privileged to learn at first hand the story of the BusWay of Nantes. This bold scheme follows on from three LRT lines progressively introduced into Nantes (centre of a conurbation of some 600,000) since the 1980s. The BusWay was to be tramway line 4, but the costs were high and patronage forecasts did not give an adequate cost-benefit return. In a breath-taking transformation, an arterial dual carriageway road into the city centre, including its bridges over the river Loire, was transformed so that the corridor now carries inbound and outbound (non-guided) busways flanked by single lanes for general traffic together with footways and cycleways. An interesting feature at the stops/stations in the busway is the use of depressed road surfaces and rubbing kerbs to allow buses to align themselves perfectly for level access.

The BusWay (route 4) operates for most of the day at headways between three and four minutes using distinctively bodied and liveried Mercedes Citaro ‘bendibuses’ but with interior finishes that might convince Mayor Johnston that the articulated bus in the right environment can be a very acceptable beast. The park and ride sites served by the route are full and more land for new ones is being acquired. At the city end route, four mingles for a short distance with general traffic to its terminus in Place Foch which public square carrying several intersecting traffic flows surprised the BRTuk party by the high levels of traffic discipline but the relative lack of the white lines, intrusive road signs, barrier railings and repeating traffic signals that we would expect in most parts of Britain. At the outer end, the road alignment reverts to a dual carriageway arterial taking traffic into and out of the city whilst – Rouen-like – the route 4 buses serve suburban streets with discrete sections of uni-directional busway to gain priority before entering another wide radial on central busways to take them to the outer terminus.

Again, the results in Nantes are impressive; the busway subtly dominates its corridor at a capital cost of about a third of the originally proposed tramway. Operating costs per passenger are slightly lower than for the LRT lines. The buses are powered by natural gas and the Nantes Metropole authority is investigating the possibility of larger bi-articulated vehicles.

The Netherlands – innovation and convention

Moving north again, the Netherlands boasts two very significant BRT initiatives. In the city of Eindhoven, Phileas magnetically guided vehicles were intended to provide guided services using reserved busways in the city centre and on a major radial route before branching into a suburban housing area or continuing to the airport respectively where the buses would be driven normally. Unfortunately, the guidance system (also reportedly being implemented in Douai, France) has not yet proved reliable, but nonetheless, the two routes are operating with a mix of Phileas and conventional vehicles.

Comparable in its boldness with the BusWay of Nantes is the ZuidTangent of North Holland. Built so that it can be easily converted to an LRT (with bends to match) the ZuidTangent links South Amsterdam via Schiphol airport and the new developments around Hoofdorp with Haarlem and further extensions are in prospect. Again using Citaro articulated buses, this BRT has long sections of a segregated two way busway, but also on street priorities in the suburbs of Amsterdam out to Amstelveen, at Schiphol airport and in old Haarlem where work to extend the system is in progress. Surprisingly, patronage has exceeded expectations and is now well in excess of eight million passenger journeys per annum. Like Nantes, this is a success story through good design and the use of well established principles of bus priority and traffic management.

BRTuk intend to include the Netherlands in their programme of study visits.

The UK’s southern stars

In the UK, as already noted, most efforts to improve bus services have been the result of partnership working between local authorities and bus operators to improve particular services or corridors rather than holistically introducing new systems. Nevertheless, a number of exciting developments have taken place or are coming to fruition. Two systems now well established in the South demonstrate what can be achieved.

In the Crawley Gatwick area, Fastway was the result of a public private partnership including four local authorities. Significantly, the local bus operator, whilst fully involved, did not feel it could justify financial involvement in the partnership. The system consists of three bus routes using three relatively short sections of KGB, together with other bus priority measures including bus actuated traffic light controls. In its fifth year of operation, Fastway is believed to have exceeded its forecasted patronage by almost a half with almost three million passenger journeys each year and high levels of reliability.

Kent Thameside is a major growth area with significant new housing developments, new industrial developments, the Bluewater shopping centre and Eurostar’s Ebbsfleet station. The Kent Thameside delivery partnership wanted to provide good public transport from the start of occupation of new housing and through a process they called Public Transport Oriented Development planning (PTOD), and they devised the multi-award winning Fastrack BRT system as an integral part of the infrastructure of the area. Two routes are now operating with substantial lengths of dedicated busway and high quality passenger infrastructure, including real-time passenger information which is actually delivered directly to small information screens installed by developers within houses in the area.

The future

There is much interest in BRT in the UK at present. The next two schemes, scheduled to open in 2009 are those in Cambridge, a long kerb guided busway using a former rail alignment to provide rapid transit to a fast growing area and Swansea which will be one of the first cases where BRT properly penetrates a city centre. Looking beyond those two, plans are being developed for Belfast, Gateshead, Leeds, Luton, Sheffield and South Hampshire whilst BRT principles are guiding many more proposals to improve through partnership the standards of bus services.

To learn more, please visit the BRTuk web-site at www.brtuk.org or come along to the BRT annual conference “Bus Rapid Transit – The BRT Planning and Implementation Toolkit” in Belfast on 1 & 2 December 2008.

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