Groundbreaking guided busway provides quality experience

The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway is at the cutting edge of Bus Rapid Transit development in the UK. Chris Poultney of Cambridgeshire County Council, explains how the world’s longest guided busway will provide high quality, reliable and frequent public transport for passengers.

Catering for housing growth

Cambridgeshire County Council is facing a major challenge in delivering the transport infrastructure the county needs in the wake of a huge growth agenda. As the fastest growing area in the UK, in coming years the Cambridge sub-region will see the construction of a significant number of major development sites in and around the city of Cambridge.

But the County Council is already taking huge steps towards catering for the growth. A key part of the Council’s transport infrastructure is now taking shape in the form of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway (CGB). When complete, CGB will link the towns of Huntingdon, St Ives and Cambridge with 25km of kerbed guided busway and 15km of on road sections. With two new park and ride sites and nine stops along the guided section of the route, the busway will form an essential link between new developments and existing communities.

One of these developments is the new 10,000 home town of Northstowe, which is adjacent to the busway and will include a priority bus route through the development so buses can access the guideway and benefit from the rapid journey times into Cambridge. The intention has always been to deliver the guided busway before first occupation of the development to maximise public transport use.

A quality experience for passengers

A key part of the development of the guided busway has been the provision of a high quality experience for passengers to help maximise patronage and as an integral part of the system. The County Council has had longstanding aspirations to deliver a true bus rapid transit system that includes frequent services to allow people to ‘turn up and go’, real time passenger information, quality stops and park and ride sites, and reliable journey times on high quality vehicles. In addition, delivering multi-operator ticketing, integrated timetables and a smooth ride quality will provide an attractive service that is forecast to deliver over 20,000 trips per day after the first ten years of operation.

Guided buses will also serve an existing park and ride site and a number of key employment and retail destinations including two hospitals and the railway stations in Cambridge and Huntingdon. When buses leave the guideway, they are able to run on roads and flexibly serve different destinations, and quickly respond to changes in demand. The on-road sections will benefit from existing bus priority measures such as the Cambridge Core Scheme, which uses rising bollards to control access to the city centre. Additional bus priority will be developed for key sections as funding becomes available.

One of the key benefits of the guideway is that it provides an exclusive public transport route that can only be used by buses or other vehicles fitted with guidewheels. The guideway between St Ives and Cambridge will bypass heavily congested roads and junctions, and will deliver reliable journey times. Once buses leave the guideway they will travel on normal roads and can serve destinations flexibly in response to demand. The journey time on the guideway between St Ives and the Cambridge Science Park is estimated to be less than 20 minutes, compared to between 45 minutes and an hour on local roads in the morning peak.

High quality infrastructure is also being promoted throughout CGB, with stops that will feature level boarding, real time passenger information, CCTV and help points, waiting facilities and public art. The high quality vehicles and stops all form part of the Bus Rapid Transit system.

Getting the busway scheme on track

CGB is the result of many years planning and development, which began with a strategic assessment of transport in the A14 corridor. This section of road between Huntingdon and St Ives is one of the most congested sections of dual carriageway in England and caters for both commuter journeys and for longer distance strategic freight movement. In 2001, the disused railway line between Cambridge and St Ives was identified as having the potential to deliver a public transport link and following an assessment of the alternative options (including light and heavy rail), a guided busway solution was selected.

Following independent assessment of the scheme at Public Inquiry and the granting of Transport and Works Act powers, the majority of funding for the scheme was secured from the Department for Transport (£92 million), with the balance (£24 million) coming from the developers who are building houses along the route.

Building the busway

Construction of the busway is now well underway. The Council’s principal contractor Edmund Nuttall is precasting the guideway beams at a site compound in the Cambridgeshire countryside. A key aspiration of the scheme is for high-speed operation similar to the guideway in Adelaide, so the construction method was an essential consideration. By pre-casting the guideway beams in specially made moulds and mixing the concrete on site, quality and consistency can be delivered that meets the very high specification on tolerance that is required to achieve a good ride quality at the design speed of 60mph.

The construction of the guideway requires a mixture of major structural works including a number of new bridges and modifications to existing bridges, and changes to roads where the guideway crosses existing highways to provide traffic signals to give the buses priority. This is all in addition to the actual casting, moving and laying of the guideway foundations and beams. Almost 7,000 concrete beams will be required to complete the project, and which are being delivered to the specialised gantry crane by customised delivery vehicles fitted with guidewheels and using the guideway itself to reach the working area.

Alongside the guideway a maintenance track is also being built which cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders will use. This will provide a significant improvement and provide a new, direct and flat route for commuters and leisure users, and will open up access to the countryside and an RSPB nature reserve. The track will also allow easy access along the route for routine maintenance or if emergency access is required.

Sustainability of the guideway

A key part of the scheme is sustainability. A number of areas have been set aside to provide environmental enhancements and mitigate for areas that will be affected by the construction. 16 different areas are being created as part of the landscaping scheme that will provide improvements for animal and plant life along the route, which passes through ecologically sensitive areas. Work to provide an alternative habitat for the endangered Grizzled Skipper, a rare butterfly, has already been completed in advance of the main construction.

The design of the guideway also provides for sustainable drainage as water can soak away between the gaps in the running surface without the need for positive drainage. This also allows an area that can be allowed to regenerate to provide some ecological interest. As the buses will be in guidance, a narrower corridor is needed than for a bus only road, which provides a significant saving to the amount of land required over the length of the route.

Running services on the busway

Three bus operators (Stagecoach, Huntingdon and District, and Whippet) have committed to the scheme and have agreed to provide a minimum level of service at opening that will provide at least a 10-minute frequency. As part of this agreement, they will also provide new vehicles that will need to meet an agreed quality specification in order to run on the guideway. Part of this will ensure that vehicles meet the latest emission standards. High quality buses and rapid boarding are an essential part of the scheme to deliver a step change in public transport provision.

The guideway will operate on an open access basis, where operators will pay access charges that will be used to meet the operating and maintenance costs of the guideway. The County Council is working closely with the operators towards the development of a multi-operator ticket for use on the guideway to provide a true ‘turn up and go’ experience for passengers. The introduction of smartcards to simplify ticketing and speed up boarding is also being considered.

Bus trials

In March 2008, the Council worked closely with four bus manufacturers (Volvo, Alexander Dennis, Optare and Scania) to carry out vehicle trials on the first completed section of guideway, which is almost 4km in length.

As well as providing a working test of the guideway and demonstrating different vehicles to the operators, buses were fitted with equipment to monitor the ride quality. The trials included braking tests and running at various speeds up to the design speed of 60mph.

A variety of vehicles were tested including single and double-deckers, during the week, which involved a number of UK ‘firsts’, including 60mph running, and the first tri-axle vehicle in a guideway. Whilst it is too early to draw detailed conclusions on the trials before the data has been analysed, the Council believes the guideway has exceeded expectations in terms of speed of operation and ride quality.

As the project moves towards opening, detailed work on operations will continue. After many years of planning and development, the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway will soon open to the public as part of an integrated public transport strategy and a key link between existing settlements and new developments.